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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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STEPS IN THE PATHS OF 



RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



A FORTNIGHT OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 



BY 



E. R. C. 





NEW YORK: 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 

gOO BROADWAY, COR. 20th ST. 



\ 







COPYRIGHT, 1882, BY 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY. 



NEW YORK: 



EDWARD O. JENKINS, 

Printer and Sierectypcr, 
20 North William St. 



ROBF.RT R UTTER, 

Binder, 
116 and 118 East 14th Street. 



THIS LITTLE BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH WARMEST 
AFFECTION 

TO 

MY FATHER. 
February 27th, 1882. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

I. — The Friendship of Jesus, 7 

II. — Reflected Light, - - - 21 

III. — Life .and Light, 27 

IV. — Perfection, 36 

V. — Captive Thoughts, 45 

VI. — The Searching of God, 55 

VII. — The Majesty of God, 61 

VIII. — The Personal Relation of God to 

Us, 68 

IX. — Walking, Running, Flying, 72 

X. — Enthusiasm, 79 

XL — Dryness of Soul, - 88 

XII. — Doubt, 103 

XIII. — Despondency, 115 

XIV.— Christian Joy, 126 

(5) 




I. 

THE FRIENDSHIP OF JESUS. 

14 1 have called you friends?''— 
John xv. 16. 

RUE friendship must be mutual and 
reciprocal. A one-sided friendship is 
no friendship at all. To love without 
return may be noble, inspiring, elevating in 
its tendencies and effects, but it is not friend- 
ship. To devote our lives, and concentrate our 
interests upon one who does not need us, who 
looks upon us with kindly patronage, but who 
feels no necessity for our love, no void in his 
heart without it — this is not the ideal of friend- 
ship, and our Saviour would not offer us this 
hollow mockery of the purest and tenderest 
relationship possible to man. Upon His lips, 
instead of losing any of its fullest human mean- 
ing by reason of His exalted Godhead, the 
word " friend," so dear and precious in its wide 
significance, is rather expanded to its noblest 
dimensions, and filled to the brim with all the 

(7) 



8 STEPS IN THE 

tenderest and deepest richness of love. Jesus 
Christ could not say, " I have called you 
friends,'" when He meant "followers" or 
" disciples," or even loved and cared for de- 
pendents. He must use the word in its fullest 
meaning if He use it at all — and He has 
used it. Do we appreciate enough the pre- 
cious truths implied in this sentence ? Do 
we enter sufficiently into our glorious privilege 
of claiming. the friendship of Jesus ? 

When He said, " I have called you friends," 
it was not only as a mark of kindness and en- 
couragement to His disciples ; it was not only 
to fill them with comfort and joy ; no, it was 
more than this : it was the expression of an 
inner yearning of His own soul, it was the 
satisfaction of a need in His humanity. He 
longed for friendship, His loving -human heart 
felt the craving for human affection, and His 
warmth of generous impulse rose in deep de- 
sire to overflow 'upon some dear human friend. 
Can we not see this all through the touching 
scenes of the Gospel narrative ? His whole 
intercourse with man is marked by this un- 
derlying influence. We can almost imagine 
that we hear the ring of a great longing 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. g 

for friendship in His tender tones as He 
speaks with one and another of the men and 
women around Him. We see Him apparently 
with difficulty restraining Himself from going 
before the time which He knew w 7 as the or- 
dained one to the rescue of His " friend Laza- 
rus," and weeping at the grave in the grief of 
a friend separated from one He loves, though 
but for a short time, by death. We hear 
the sad yearning of His troubled question to 
the friends upon whom He would have loved 
to lean in tender reliance : " Will ye also go 
away?" The last chapters of St. John's Gos- 
pel are filled full of hints of this human desire 
for friendship which the "disciple whom Jesus 
loved" knew best to record. The 14th, 15th, 
and 16th chapters are the deepest, truest, ten- 
derest outpourings of a human friendship only 
strengthened and increased because it was the 
friendship of the Son of God. So dependent 
was our blessed Master upon the support and 
affection of His friends that in the deepest 
desolation of grief, foreseeing the desertion of 
those dearest to Him, He exclaims, " Ye shall 
leave me alone," and only with the quick after- 
thought of the well-beloved Son, He corrects 



10 STEPS IN THE 

His human utterance by the divine reassurance, 
" And yet I am not alone, because the Father 
is with me." 

In the last great agony He interrupts His 
impassioned prayer twice to seek the sympa- 
thy and love of His " friends," and pathetic 
indeed sounds down to us through the cent- 
uries one of the saddest utterances of the 
" Man of Sorrows," " What, could ye not 
watch with me one hour!" The intensity 
of sorrow and disappointment and reproach 
in the look which He turned upon the deny- 
ing Peter, who can fathom? The bitter weep- 
ing which it occasioned gives us some hint of 
the sadness of wounded love which it con- 
veyed. And, lastly, how touching a picture 
of tender friendship do we find in the simple 
morning meal, laid out with the forethought 
of a love to which even the practical details 
of common life are not too trivial to be glori- 
fied with its golden light ; the fire of coals, 
around which the weary fishermen, chilled 
with their night-long labor, could warm their 
numbed limbs, the fish and bread spread out 
with careful affection, ready to furnish a warm 
and welcome breakfast to the friends to whom 



PA THS OF RIGH TEOUSNESS. \ i 

the Son of God found it His pleasure to min- 
ister. No agony of death, no glory of resur- 
rection, could quench the love in the Master's 
heart ; His three times repeated, " Lovest 
thou me?" shows the old longing, intensified 
rather than dulled by the many marvelous ex- 
periences of the past days. 

Ah, my friends, Jesus Christ is the same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever ! We can not 
fear change in that perfect character ; we 
need not dread lest one trait of the Man 
Christ Jesus should vanish from the glorified 
life of the ascended Lord. He has taken our 
humanity upon Him, and He will not let it 
fall from Him. Surely He still looks back 
upon His earthly life with its human friend- 
ships and associations, and the old longing 
for love in His human heart still asks to be 
satisfied by the friendship of each and every 
one of us. Tenderly, sweetly, quaintly through 
the ages rings the Word of our ascended Sav- 
iour, breathing from His royal throne the sim- 
ple, affectionate tone of pleading friendship : 
" Behold, I stand at the door and knock : if 
any man hear my voice, and open the door, 
I will come in to him, and will sup with him, 
and he with me," 



12 STEPS IN THE 

Notice the deep insight of friendship which 
made Him speak of the supping as mutual — 
" I will sup with him, and he with me" No 
setting out of costly dishes to feast an hon- 
ored guest. It is the knock of a friend seek- 
ing admittance to our innermost domestic pri- 
vacy, looking forward with pleasant anticipa- 
tion to the homely meal by the friendly hearth. 
Let us not dream that Jesus Christ is inde- 
pendent of our love and friendship even in 
Heaven. If we neglect this blessed privilege, 
if we thrust Him from the door instead of 
opening it wide to receive the precious guest, 
His voice of sad reproof will call to us as it 
did to Saul, " Why persecutest thou me ?" 

The need of friendship, then, the desire to 
be loved, must be reciprocal, — and we have 
seen how fully our Master meets this require- 
ment. But there are other obligations in a 
perfect friendship — necessary elements, with- 
out which, at least the highest and noblest 
form of friendship can not exist. Let us 
consider some of these — and see how com- 
pletely our Lord shows us the full-orbed sym- 
metry of all that friendship can be. 

And first, there must be loyalty — a loyalty 
which will proudly acknowledge the bond of 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. j 3 

friendship — a loyalty which will plead for the 
friend, which will take his side, no matter where 
or when. A friend who was ashamed of his 
friendship, who denied it to the world, who 
heard his friend maligned and held his peace 
— such a man were surely not worthy of the 
name. Loyalty is a necessity to true friend- 
ship. Hear what our Heavenly Friend says 
of those who have deserved His friendship, 
who have " overcome": "I will confess his 
name before my Father, and before His an- 
gels." There will be no denial of the poor, 
unworthy friends, there will be confession full 
and perfect before the multitudes of Heaven. 
Not only does He confess, but " He liveth to 
make intercession " for us. Loyalty true and 
helpful — interceding for us, confessing His 
knowledge of, and friendship for us. This 
requirement does Jesus meet fully and com- 
pletely. Alas ! can we say the same of our- 
selves ? Do we confess Him before men? 
Do we intercede for Him with those who will 
not receive Him ? There is a great sadness 
in the thought that such friendship as He has 
offered should be slighted — and yet, a Peter 
could deny Him ! Let us try to be loyal to 



14 STEPS IN THE 

the Friend who rejoices in our loyalty, and 
yearns to hear our frank confession of Him. 

Secondly, there must be constancy in a per- 
fect friendship. Fear of change, the possibil- 
ity of love dying into indifference — there is 
no more ghastly disturber of the peace of 
friendship than this. From Him who has 
called us "friends" we need dread no such 
sorrow. With Him is "no variableness, nei- 
ther shadow of turning" ; " having loved His 
own which were in the world, He loved them 
to the end." " Jesus Christ, the same yester- 
day, and to-day, and forever," has left as His 
last words to His friends the promise : " Lo, 
I am with you alway, even unto the end of 
the world." And " He is faithful that prom- 
ised." We can trust to His constancy through 
all trials and sorrows. Can we trust our own ? 
Let us pray humbly day by day that we may 
be faithful to Him — that we may " endure to 
the end," that when He cometh He shall find 
us watching. 

Thirdly, there must be full and entire sym- 
pathy between friends. A sympathy which 
enters into the joys and sorrows of the friend 
as though they were one's own. A sympa- 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. \ 5 

thy which soothes the foolish fears gently, 
which satisfies the anxious doubt with kind- 
ness, which bears inconsistency and ignorance 
with tender love. Is not this the very descrip- 
tion of our Lord ? He is " touched with the 
feeling of our infirmities/' and having been 
" tempted in all points like as we are," He 
enters into our temptations with true and 
sincere sympathy. He encourages us with 
His soothing voice, saying, " My friends, be- 
not afraid." He goes to a doubting Thomas 
and gives him the proof He desired. He is 
ever ready to enter into all our joys and sor- 
rows, to help and support us in trouble, to 
make Himself one with us in utter self-forget- 
ting sympathy. There is no sympathy so deep 
and rich as that of Jesus. And it is ours if 
we will take it. Shall we neglect the benefit 
of so great a blessing ? 

Another very necessary,very essential require- 
ment of friendship is a perfect understand- 
ing, a frankness and openness which leaves 
no secret hidden from the friend, which makes 
him a participator in every interest, in every 
ambition, in every joy or sorrow, which shares 
all its knowledge, which confides its inner- 



1 6 STEPS IN THE 

most thoughts, trusting the friend to under- 
stand and to sympathize. How fully, how 
deeply, how beautifully does the friendship 
of Jesus Christ stand this test ! He confides 
to us all His plans, all His hopes, all His am- 
bitions, trusting the furtherance of His mighty 
schemes into our feeble hands ; He talks to 
us with all the frank intimacy of a loving friend, 
giving us deep insights into His inner life, 
revealing for our help even His secret hours 
of communion with His Father. He says : 
" I have called you friends, for all things that 
I have heard of my Father I have made known 
unto you." We are instructed by Him in all 
the knowledge of Heaven. His teaching is 
not that of a schoolmaster, but of a friend 
who wishes the one He loves to know what 
He knows. 

" And what delights can equal those 
That stir the spirit's inner deeps, 
When one that loves, but knows not, reaps 
A truth from one that loves and knows ? " 

Our Friend wishes us to share everything 
with Him, He goes to prepare a place for us, 
"that where I am, there ye may be also." We 



PA THS OF RIGHT E USNESS. j 7 

are called to His "fellowship," He wishes us 
to be " partakers of His glory," and also, deep- 
est, most significant sign of the highest friend- 
ship, He wishes us to be " partakers of His 
sufferings." 

And here is the last and chiefest requirement 
of friendship — it is the obligation to self-sac- 
rifice. It is in this greatest and final test that 
the Son of God has exalted the name of friend- 
ship to such a height of glory, that it should 
never be degraded to designate any of the 
selfish companionships of ignoble men. " Great- 
er love hath no man than this, that a man lay 
down his life for his friends." And this is the 
love which Jesus has shown us. " Surely He 
hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." 
" He was wounded for our transgressions, He 
was bruised for our iniquities." There is not 
one of us, no matter how weak or frail, who 
can not claim this last and greatest sign of 
the friendship of Jesus, and say : " Who loved 
me, and gave Himself for me ! " 

Such is the friendship of our Master. This 
is what He means when He says, " I have 
called you friends" — this, and more, much 
more, which we can only guess at dimly now, 



1 8 STEPS IN THE 

but which year by year unfolds itself in larger, 
deeper meaning to the Christian who responds 
to the Saviour's desire for friendship with an 
answering cry, " Lord, Thou knowest all 
things, Thou knowest that I love Thee ! " 

But as we noticed in the beginning, so let 
us come back at the conclusion to the fact 
that friendship must be reciprocal. We have 
seen how fully Jesus meets every requirement, 
every obligation of friendship, but let us not 
forget that if we would enter into the joy of 
this Divine friendship, we too must lay upon 
ourselves obligations which can not be broken 
without weakening the bond and imperiling 
the closeness of union. We must yearn and 
long for the friendship which will not be de- 
nied us if we hunger and thirst for it. We 
must be loyal in our confession, constant in 
our love, sympathizing keenly with our 
Friend, trusting Him with all our secrets, 
learning of Him with confidence in His teach- 
ing, willingly entering into fellowship with 
Him, even though it be a fellowship of suffer- 
ing — and, lastly, we must be willing to sacrifice 
ourselves for Him. He desires that, as He 
laid down His life for us, we should be willing 



PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



19 



to lay down our wills for Him, — that we offer 
up ourselves, a living sacrifice, to Him. "Ye 
are my friends if ye do whatsoever I com- 
mand you." We must be obedient, even as 
He was " obedient unto death." This may 
seem a severe requirement, but love will make 
it easy. It was because He loved us that He 
gave Himself for us. And surely we must love 
Him since " He first loved us." And love, 
earnest, warm, rejoicing in the power of doing 
something for its object, such love, nourished 
and encouraged in our hearts, will make the 
doing what He commands a pleasure rather 
than a labor, a satisfaction of our friendship 
in the performance of which we will glory. 

The friend of Jesus ! What a title for any 
one of us to wear! Precious in its deep and 
wonderful significance of meaning ! Inspiring 
to all highest and noblest endeavors, soothing 
and comforting in the darkest trials ! Having 
been called by God " unto the fellowship of 
His Son Jesus Christ our Lord," let us walk 
" worthy of the vocation " w 7 herewith we are 
called — remembering that He has called us 
"friends/" 



20 STEPS IN THE 



THE MEANING OF THE LOOK. 




THINK that look of Christ might seem to say — ■ 
" Thou Peter ! art thou then a common stone 
Which I at last must break mv heart upon, 

For all God's charge to His high angels may 

Guard my foot better ? Did I yesterday 

Wash thy feet, my beloved, that they should run 

Quick to deny me 'neath the morning sun, 

And do thy kisses, like the rest, betray ? 

The cock crows coldly. Go and manifest 

A late contrition, but no bootless fear ! 

For when thy final need is dreariest, 

Thou shalt not be denied, as I am here. 

My voice, to God and angels, shall attest, 

' Because / know this man, let him be clear ! ' ' 

MRS. BROWNING. 

" When Jesus is present, all is well, and nothing 
seems difficult; but when Jesus is absent, everything is 

hard Without a friend thou canst not well 

live ; and if Jesus be not above all a friend to thee, thou 

shalt be indeed sad and desolate And if thou 

shouldst drive Him from thee, and lose Him, unto whom 
wilt thou flee, and whom wilt thou then seek for thy 
friend? .... Love all for Jesus, but Jesus for Himself. 
Jesus Christ alone is singularly to be beloved : who 

alone is found Good and Faithful above all friends 

Drink of the Lord's cup with hearty affection, if thou 
desire to be His friend, and to have part with Him." 

A'KEMPIS. 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. 2 1 




II. 

REFLECTED LIGHT. 

44 Arise, shine for thy light is come, 
and the glory of the Lord is risen 
uj>on thee." — Is. lx. i. 

HE light by which we shine is a re- 
flected one. It is not the light which 
shines direct and fresh from the heart 
of the Sun, but it is the Sun's light caught 
and reflected upon the bright pebbles on the 
beach, or from the glittering vane of some 
lofty cathedral ; orbing itself into shining min- 
iature suns in the drops of dew on a blade of 
grass, or illuminating with soft rose-tint glow 
the snow-clad mountain-tops. Man's office and 
calling is thus to reflect the glory of God. 
Even Jesus Christ in His human personality 
filled this vocation, as it is written : " The 
light ot the knowledge of the glory of God" 
shined in our hearts " in the face of Jesus 
Christ." 

But how can the Central Light be reflected ? 



22 STEPS IN THE 

How did Jesus reflect the glory of His Father? 
By His life. " The life was the light of men." 
His Life was the reflection of the glory of God, 
the image of that hidden and ineffable radi- 
ance. And in our poor, dimmed, stained lives 
we too must strive to throw out upon our 
fellows some broken rays of our Father's 
glory. We are often anxious and troubled to 
know how to reach our friends and compan- 
ions with some help, how to draw the atten- 
tion of those among them who are thoughtless 
of the future, to some higher range of feeling. 
In speaking of religious things to them we are 
often detained, not from fear or shame, but be- 
cause we are afraid of harming instead of help- 
ing. We do not know how to begin the sub- 
ject ; any words we would say sound like cant, 
and we dread turning our friends away from 
the truth by forcing a distasteful conversation 
upon them. It is necessary to use great deli- 
cacy and discrimination. Inappropriate at- 
tempts do more harm than good. And yet we 
have a duty even here. There are moments 
when a little word may greatly help, there are 
opportunities when the conscience may be 
roused, and the heart touched ; — these must 



PA THS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 2 3 

be seized eagerly and prayerfully. But often 
words can not reach our friends, often the days 
slip by without a chance of speaking for 
Jesus. Can we, then, do nothing for Him? 
Ah, there is a greater weapon than speech 
which we need never lay aside, there is the 
silent influence of a life shining with God's 
light, there is the reflection which we can cast 
at all hours and in all circumstances upon 
those around us. There are men in whose 
society you may feel nearer to Jesus, although 
they do not mention His name; there are 
women of whom it may be said like Mrs. 
Browning's " Kate," " Men at her side grew 
nobler, girls purer. ,, 

But this light can only emanate from us in 
proportion as we put ourselves in a position 
to be shined upon. Nearness to our Master, 
a face turned toward Him in constant love 
and devotion — without this our lives will be 
but dark and lustreless. It is only by looking 
into Heaven and seeing "the glory of God" 
that the face of a man can become, as it were, 
" the face of an angel.' ' It is the highest mount- 
ain peak which glows most vividly with all the 
rainbow colors of the setting sun, its snows 



24 



STEPS IN THE 



tinged with brilliant rose hues, its little cha- 
lets catching the glory in every sparkling pane 
of their tiny windows, and flashing back the 
heavenly brilliancy with a radiance which 
chains the upward gaze of the dwellers in 
the valley at its base. 

Let us try in like manner to rise into the 
sunlight, for we are not " sufficient of our- 
selves; but our sufficiency is of God." "And 
not as Moses, which put a vail over his face " 
(because the glory which shone upon it was 
the glory direct from the awful, blinding bril- 
liancy of the great Jehovah), "but we all, with 
open face beholding as in a glass the glory of 
the Lord, are changed into the same image 
from glory to glory." 

And not only must we put ourselves into a 
right position to be shined upon, but we must 
retain the light within us. We must draw in 
the rays of the Sun before we can shed them 
upon others. There must be a latent light 
in our souls, like the glow in the heart of the 
diamond. The Christian must let the warmth 
and radiance of the love of Jesus Christ per- 
meate his own spirit before he can by his ex- 
ample or influence shed any light upon those 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. 2 5 

around him. He must keep the rays of the 
Sun of Righteousness locked in his own heart 
first if he would have others see "the God 
within him light his face/' 

And, lastly, the more highly polished the 
metal or the precious stone is, the more bril- 
liantly it reflects the light. The roughnesses 
must be smoothed by careful, pains-taking self- 
control, the untrue angles must be cut down 
by self-sacrifice, the surface must be evened by 
daily work and spiritual exercise, even trials 
and sorrows must be borne patiently, know- 
ing that they will give the character an added 
lustre which will more worthily reflect our 
Master's image. 

It is to those who earnestly endeavor to 
clothe themselves in the glory of this reflected 
Light of God, that the promise is given : 
"And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of 
hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels." 
And having glorified Him on the earth, we 
shall be called to add our faint and humble 
light to the brilliancy of that " holy Jeru- 
salem," which St. John saw, "descending out 
of heaven from God ; having the glory of 
God ; and her light was like unto a stone 
most precious." 



2 6 STEPS IN THE 

(THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY A SERMON ON "SOUL 
SHADOWS.") 

HE people brought their sick into the street 
That haply when St. Peter that way passed 
His very shadow might be on them cast 
With influence healing. For, with faith replete 
With superstition, they but held it meet 
That holiness should heal ; and boldly classed 
Together soul and body. That is past. 
Our age is wiser ; yet we must not treat 
This people's thought as folly. Let us fee! 
Our souls cast shadows wheresoe'er we go, 
Unconscious ones, but none the less most resu., 
The influence of what we are we throw 
Around us ever. Shall our shadows heal 
The souls they fall on, or increase their woe ? 

E. R. C. 



PA THS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 2 ? 




III. 
LIFE AND LIGHT. 

" The Life was the Light of Men." 
— John i. 4. 

IFE is light. There is no better syn- 
onym for the one word than the other. 
We praise the life in the sparkling 
diamond, or in the warm light of a southern 
landscape ; and we speak of the light which 
a bright and healthy personality sheds upon 
us, and of the "sunny" presence of some 
whole-souled friend, whose life is overflowing 
with cheering vitality. In the Bible the terms 
are frequently used as equivalents, and inter- 
changed with a freedom which sees no differ- 
ence in them. "The light of life"; "the light 
of the living"; "with Thee is the fountain 
of life; in Thy light shall we see light." And, 
in direct contrast, using the two opposite 
terms : " The valley of the shadow of death." 
Life, full, intense, pulsing with healthy heart- 



28 STEPS IN THE 

beats, has always inspired humanity with the 
same joyousness, the same glad vigor which one 
feels in stepping out of the darkened house 
into a great overwhelming flood of warm and 
generous sunlight. And in the very heart and 
centre of this interchange of idea, quickening 
it all with the intensity of an Eternal, and Su- 
pernatural Truth, we find the grand central 
Synonym : " The Life, which was the Light." 
The death of Jesus in its tragic pathos, with 
its great truth of reconciliation to God, its 
mighty sacrifice of redeeming love, appeals so 
strongly to the heart of the Christian that we 
are apt to forget, in our natural clinging to the 
comfort of its teaching, that, although it was 
indeed a necessary offering for us, it was an 
hour of intensest horror, and that there was 
darkness over all the land, darkness even for 
a moment in the Heart of our Saviour, as that 
Life was giving Itself over to death, and with 
faculties dimmed, and body racked with pain 
which blinded the clear vision of the soul, He 
cried in utmost agony of spirit, " My God, my 
God, why hast Thou forsaken me ? " Truly 
we are reconciled by His death, but " much 
more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by 



PA THS OF RIGH TEO USNESS. 2 g 

His life." There could be no lasting reconcil- 
iation without a continued and progressive 
salvation from sin. And this salvation can 
only come by the full and perfect Life, past, 
present, and to come, of our Blessed Master. 
It is only by a contemplation of His Holy 
Life that the day can dawn, and the daystar 
arise in our hearts. Let us try to gather 
some of the rays of that great Light, and di- 
rect them to shine upon our paths. 

There are three phases of the Life of Jesus 
Christ, the central one of which is generally 
the one dwelt upon, and with reason, as it is 
concerning this life, in its Incarnation, that 
we have had the clearest and fullest revelation, 
although, even in it, there are silences which no 
sound has awakened, mysteries which as yet 
we can not penetrate, awful secrets before 
which we must stand with bowed heads, and 
worship in trustful ignorance. 

There is, however, some light thrown upon 
all three of the periods in the life of our 
Sun of Righteousness, the period before His 
Incarnation, His life upon earth as man, and 
His continued life after His ascension. In the 
old dispensation we have only vague hints, 



3 o STEPS IN THE 

dim rays enlightening the waning night and 
prophesying dawn ; but the light thrown from 
them is always a life-giving one, always com- 
forting and inspiring with hope of the coming 
day. The mystic King of Salem dispensing 
" bread and wine," ministering to the wants 
of the hungry and thirsty, and supplementing 
physical help by the invocation of spiritual 
blessing, reminding us in the narrative of man)/ 
centuries beforehand, of the breaking of bread 
and pouring out of wine, with its accompany- 
ing blessing, which has become one of the 
most cherished memories, and dearest sacra- 
ments of the Christian Church ; the angel of 
the Lord cheering the famished and desolate 
Hagar, urging her to return to her home and 
her duty, comforting her with promises of 
support and help; again, appearing to dis- 
heartened Gideon, inspiring him with fresh 
hope, and saying to him in the very words 
which afterward soothed the fears and quieted 
the doubts of the saddened and wavering dis- 
ciples of the Divine Man, " Peace be unto 
thee, fear not" ; the form " like the Son of God," 
strengthening with His presence the three 
heroic Jews in their fiery furnace, walking 



PA TIIS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



31 



with them in sweet companionship through 
the flames of their trial, and giving them 
power through His might to withstand their 
fury. In these, as in many other more vague 
and indistinct hints, we see the Life which 
was the Light of men shining upon the earth, 
illumining its dark places, ministering to the 
wants of the sad, discouraged, and tempted 
among His brethren, with a human sympathy, 
a tender insight, which foreshadowed with 
wonderful soft radiance the incarnated Life 
which " went about doing good." The latent 
humanity enclosed within the Divinity of Him 
who was in the beginning with God, gleams 
forth from the earliest.record of His Life, that 
Life which was manifested for our salvation. 
" In all their affliction He was afflicted, and 
the angel of His presence saved them." 

The second period in the total Life of Christ 
is the one of the Incarnation with which we 
are best acquainted, and whose comforts and 
lessons have been so often dwelt upon that 
there seems nothing left to say. The great 
Light bursting in full-orbed splendor upon a 
world which loved darkness better than light. 
The Ideal of all noble and aspiring hearts 



32 STEPS IN THE 

made a blessed Reality ; the great Example 
of all future ages lived before the eyes of all 
men, which to follow and to know is life eter- 
nal. Humanity raised and ennobled by the 
Perfect man, whose law of love is made possi- 
ble by His own keeping of that law in every 
word and action of His human life. 

•' The Man most man, with tenderest human hands, 

Works best for men, — as God in Nazareth 

Subsists no law of life outside of life, 
No perfect manners without Christian souls ; 
The Christ Himself had been no Law-giver, 
Unless He had given His life, too, with the law." 

In this earthly Life the same great motive 
impelled Him w T ho is the same yesterday, 
to-day, and forever, the angel of His presence 
had been saving men since the creation of the 
world ; in a larger and fuller sense " He came 
into the world to save sinners." 

And, lastly, the Life of Christ did not end 
upon the Cross ; there is a third period of in- 
tense and eternal significance. " He liveth to 
make intercession " for us ; " wherefore He is 
able also to save them to the uttermost that 
come unto God by Him." Again the note, clear 



PA THS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 33 

and ringing, of salvation by the Life is struck 
The human and yet divine Elder Brother, 
touched with our infirmities, having been 
tempted like as we are in all points, taking 
back with Him, even to the heavenly glory 
which He had with God before the world be 
gan, a remembrance vivid and everlasting of 
the human life with its sorrows and its joys 
its temptations and weaknesses, this dear, 
sympathizing High Priest has passed into the 
heavens to continue His work of salvation, to 
live that we might live with Him. 

What must we do to receive the full benefit 
of this life-giving radiance ? How can we be 
illuminated with the " light from heaven above 
the brightness of the sun " ? As we have seen 
that the light with which we shine is a reflected 
one, so, too r is our life, the life which He has 
promised to save from sin, not intrinsic, but 
from Him. It is the vitality, fresh and healthy., 
of the sound man, infused into the veins of 
the invalid, and coursing through his body 
with the strengthening and healing influence 
of new, revivified life. God has "given to the 
Son to have life in Himself" ; but " God hath 
given to us eternal life, and this life is in His 
3 



3 4 STEPS IN THE 

Son/' It is only as we are in Him and He 
in us that we can live. Close communion 
with Him, increasing love toward Him, a 
nearer following after Him, this is the secret 
of life. " He that hath the Son hath life.' , 
" He that keepeth His commandments dwell- 
eth in Him, and He in him/' " He that saith 
he abideth in Him, ought himself also so to 
walk, even as He walked." "He that follow- 
eth me shall have the light of life." 

These are the key-notes by which to guide 
our lives. To keep constantly and consciously 
in His presence (for it is the angel of His pres- 
ence which saves), to assimilate His Life with 
ours through grace, to absorb His divine light 
into our souls by the attracting power of love, 
to follow the great example of His life upon 
earth, trying to walk even as He walked, by 
patient, prayerful effort; in this way, and in 
this way only, can our reconciliation to God 
N be complemented and made complete in our 
salvation from sin. The Light which is the 
Light of the world will shine into our hearts, 
the Life which is eternal will throb and pulse 
through our veins, strengthening our weak 
resolutions, giving new energy to the fulfill- 



PA TIIS OF RIGHTEO USXESS. 3 5 

rnent of our duties, infusing fresh joy into 
our daily existence. " But unto you that fear 
my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise 
with healing in His wings "; and " when Christ, 
who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also 
appear with Him in glory." 




HO' truths in manhood darkly join, 
Deep-seated in our mystic frame, 
We yield all blessing to the name 
Of Him that made them current coin. 



" For wisdom dealt with mortal powers 
Where truth in closest words shall fail, 
When truth embodied in a tale 
Shall enter in at lowly doors. 

" And so the Word had breath, and wrought 
With human hands the. creed of creeds 
In loveliness of perfect deeds 
More strong than all poetic thought." 

"In Memoriam" TENNYSON. 

" Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, 
O life, not death, for which we pant ; 
More life, and fuller, that I want." 

TENNYSON. 



36 STEPS IN THE 




IV. 

PERFECTION. 

"The Perfect Man" — Ephesians iv. 13. 

iHE exhortation, "Be ye perfect," stag- 
gers us as we read it. Why was such a 
hard command given, which surely is 
one impossible to be executed by weak and 
struggling mortals ? There is more wisdom 
and kindness hidden in this seemingly hard 
word of the Master than we can at first dis- 
cover. 

An Ideal is always necessary to man — some- 
thing raised above and beyond him to which 
he may press forward. Without an aim ever 
before him, not yet attained, eluding his grasp, 
and still beckoning him onward, the energies 
of man relax their tension, his faculties be- 
come inactive, and he sinks into helplessness 
and weakness. Perfection stands before the 
Christian's eyes, a mark for his struggling am- 
bition, as wealth, power, fame, or any of the 



PA THS OF RIGH TEO USNESS. 3 j 

numerous objects to which the heart of man 
is drawn, elicit the energies and vitalize the 
forces of the world with an upward-striving 
impulse. And perfection is an aim which in 
this life we can never say with self-satisfied 
contentment that we have reached. If Christ 
had placed a lower staridard before us we 
might, with the blind self-conceit of humanity, 
fancy ourselves, after some striving and strug- 
gling, to have attained it ; we might even an- 
swer with the young ruler, in his childishly 
boastful, and yet sincerely-meant profession 
of integrity, " All these have I kept." 

But Jesus Christ always gives us a higher 
Ideal than the one which we think we have 
realized. He knows that the sense of having 
something beyond to strive for is the very 
secret of growth in grace ; indeed, not only 
of growth, but even of keeping our present 
stand-point and not sliding backward. In or- 
der to " press toward the mark for the prize 
of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ, " 
we must be able to say: " I count not myself 
to have apprehended." As some one has 
said : " He who aims at the sky shoots higher 
than he who aims at the tree, even though he 



38 



STEPS IN THE 



does not reach the sky." To have the aim 
high is the true rule of Christian progress. 

But the mere word " Perfection " would be 
a vague and undefined object of ambition, one 
which we could only blindly grope for, not 
knowing what it might be when it was at- 
tained, and being deterred and frightened by 
its dim immensity of idea ; we must have 
some known standard before we can feel the 
impulse to strive after it, some example of 
success in the difficult path we have started 
upon if we w r ould have our feet press eagerly 
forward. Such a standard, such an example 
has been lived for us. The word Perfection 
has become a vital^ Reality. Jesus Christ 
stands before us in the radiant, transparent 
whiteness of His perfect Life, and having 
given us the command, " Be ye perfect," He 
explains and simplifies it by saying, " If thou 
wilt be perfect .... come and follow me." 

It is true that the contemplation of this 
glorious Ideal of the Christian's ambition 
must make us shrink most pitiably in our 
own estimations ; seeing the beauty of His 
perfectness we feel all the more strongly the 
distance between us, and discouragement may 



PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, 



39 



seize upon us with a sense of the impossibility 
of attainment. But let us remember that His 
Perfection stands as a pledge of our final per- 
fection if we believe in Him. " Being made 
perfect He became the Author of eternal sal- 
vation unto all them that obey Him." Pa- 
tient continuance in well-doing, " looking unto 
Jesus who is the Author and Finisher of our 
faith," will constantly lessen the distance be- 
tween us, and, notwithstanding countless slips 
and falls, will nevertheless keep our courage 
up, and incite us to ever-increasing activity 
of progress. And our progress, our growth 
in energy of action, our constantly enlarging 
visions of what we should be, and w 7 hat w 7 e 
may become, is what our loving Saviour in 
His clear insight, in His marvelous compre- 
hension of our characters, wished to stimulate 
and encourage in His commandment of, " Be 
ye perfect." He does not urge us beyond 
our strength ; He is willing that Eternity 
should complete what Time has begun, He 
takes with tender indulgence the desire for 
perfection as a partial satisfaction, the earnest 
will for the imperfect deed. The longing to 
reach our Ideal, to attain the ambition of our 



4Q 



STEPS IN THE 



lives, gives an impetus to our Christianity, 
which helps us very far toward the fulfillment 
of our aim. 




TILL, through our paltry stir and strife, 
Glows down the wished Ideal, 
And longing moulds in clay what Life 
Carves in the marble Real ; 

To let the new life in, we know, 
Desire must ope the portal ; — 
Perhaps the longing to be so 
Helps make the soul immortal. 



" Longing is God's fresh heavenward will 
With our poor earthward striving ; 
We quench it that we may be still 
Content with merely living ; 

" But, would we learn that heart's full scope 
Which we are hourly wronging, 
Our lives must climb from hope to hope 
And realize our longing." 



Leaving the consideration of our own 
strivings for perfection, how blessed is the 
thought of the perfectness of Christ ! What 
a relief it is to turn from the disappointing 
efforts to he satisfied with the characters of 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. 4 T 

ourselves or our neighbors, to that one Per- 
fect Character whose unchanging, reliable cer- 
tainty of complete goodness is a firm founda- 
tion under our feet, and in turning to whom 
we know, with a sigh of relief, that w T e can 
find the utter satisfaction of our demands up- 
on character, that in Him we can not be dis- 
appointed however exalted an ideal we may 
cherish ! There are times when we turn with 
a sense of distrust from any human compan- 
ionship, when we can not rely upon any one in 
the calm assurance that we can trust their 
judgment, that we can be sure of their affec- 
tion, that we can not be deceived by their char- 
acters. We shrink within ourselves, and feel 
that we must only rely on our own individual 
judgment, that no one else can help us or give 
us advice, for that others are as likely to err as 
ourselves. This is sad enough, but, when 
after many trials, after hard struggles, ear- 
nest resolves, even fervent prayers, we find 
the sad story repeated that we can not trust 
ourselves for a single moment ; when we find 
the slight improvement in character, at which 
vve had been working so hard, fall and crumble 
to nothing in one unguarded instant, leaving 



42 



STEPS IN THE 



the whole work to be done over a^ain ; when 
we grow from bitter experience to distrust 
every thought, and word, and deed of our 
own, and to suspect a flaw in our best efforts ; 
— then indeed comes despair, the very saddest 
kind of despair which arises from utter disap- 
pointment in humanity, utter weariness at 
the imperfections which meet us at every 
turn in our intercourse with others and our 
communion with ourselves ! And it is when 
these moods are upon us that the thought of 
Jesus Christ's perfection comes to us with its 
strength of consolation. If there were no 
other gift which He had brought us but sim- 
ply His entire perfectness, it would have been 
enough to infuse new life into our souls, and 
save us from the despondency of unrealized 
desires, to make us " free from the sick fatigue, 
the languid doubt, which much to have tried, 
in much been baffled, brings. " 

To know that there was one perfect man, is 
to make us more tolerant of humanity, both 
in ourselves and others. And when we are 
wearied with struggles against our own imper- 
fections, or deceived in the high estimation 
we had held of some friend, we can confidingly 



PA THS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 43 

rest our tired, aching hearts against the loving 
breast of our Perfect Master, whose arms are 
ever open to receive us, and of whom even a 
Pilate was forced to say, " I find no fault in 
Him ! ,; No fault ! There is rest and refresh- 
ment in the very sound, so strange in this 
world of sin ! 

And thus, keeping Christ's life before us as 
the Ideal to which we must diligently press ? 
the Pattern which we must follow in close and 
loving imitation; and guarding within our 
hearts the cheering and blessed remembrance 
of His perfection, which He not only has 
given us as a reliance and trust and comfort, 
but which He also promises that we may 
share w 7 ith Him ; " I in them, and thou in 
Me, that they may be made perfect in One " ; 
■ — thus may we run with patience the race that 
is set before us ; " Till w 7 e all come in the unity 
of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son 
of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure 
of the stature of the fullness of Christ. " 



HEREFORE to whom turn I but to Thee, the 

ineffable Name ? 
Builder and Maker, Thou, of houses not made 
with hands- ! 



44 STEPS IN THE 

What, have fear of change from Thee, who art ever the 

same ? 
Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power 

expands ? 
There shall never be one lost good ! What was shall 

live as before ; 
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound ; 
What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much 

good more ; 
On earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven, a perfect 

round 

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too 

hard, 
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the 

sky, 
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard ; 
Enough that he heard it once : we shall hear it by and 

by." R. BROWNING. 



Then keep thy conscience sensitive ; 

No inward token miss ; 
And go where grace entices thee ;— 

Perfection lies in this." 

FABER, 



PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



45 




V, 



CAPTIVE THOUGHTS. 

" Bringing into captivity every 
thotight to the obedience of 
Christ.'''' — 2 Cor. x. 5. 

NOTHER hard commandment, this ! 
To bring into obedience actions, 
words, yes, but thoughts ! To bring 
into captivity shadowy forms, insubstantial, 
intangible, vague, which flit and glide about 
the heart, hiding in its crevices, disappearing 
when sought for, changing color like the 
chameleon when touched, fading like ghosts 
when the light of day is turned upon them, 
phantasms which come under no law, which 
own no Master ! Surely to lead these lawless, 
inconsequent, mutinous thoughts as captured 
enemies, as serviceable slaves, to Christ, bid- 
ding Him command them, pledging them to 
do His bidding, this must be the highest pin- 
nacle of Christian excellence, the greatest con- 



46 STEPS IN THE 

quest of the soldier of Christ. The warfare 
with the thoughts of our hearts is not like the 
regular and honest campaign, where foe meets 
foe on open ground, where all the forces are 
mustered, and one knows what and how one 
is fighting. No, these insidious enemies lie 
in ambush, they shoot their arrows from be- 
hind the trees, they steal noiselessly into our 
fortress by night, they disguise themselves as 
friends and come to us offering us aid — they 
play the part of counselors, and sit in unsus- 
pected dignity at our council of war, advising 
with deceptive plausibility the measures which 
shall work our ruin. We nurse the peaceful, 
harmless, apparently lifeless creature in our 
bosom, and only discover its power for evil 
when the warmth of our heart has awakened 
it, and it pierces us with its cruel sting ! What 
Christian has not felt the wounds of evil 
thoughts fostered unsuspectingly in his soul? 
We are startled and alarmed when suddenly 
an evil suggestion, a selfish inspiration, a 
deadly temptation springs full of force and 
life into our notice. We had not dreamt of 
such a thing, we had not consciously fostered 
it ; it seemed to leap into existence without 



PA THS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



47 



having had source or cause. How came it in 
our hearts? At such a time the command to 
bring every thought into obedience seems 
cruelly impossible of being followed, and the 
conquest of this most subtle foe, utterly, hope- 
lessly unattainable. 

Is there no way of victory, no hope of suc- 
cess ? Certainly there is, for God does not 
mock us by laying upon us heavy burdens 
grievous to be borne, which He will not help 
us move. With His help even thoughts may 
be made captives, willing captives, doing good 
service, working bravely and helpfully for the 
advancement of our holiness and the glory of 
God. For, being made originally in the image 
of God, there is no impulse, no tendency of 
our humanity to which a heavenward direc- 
tion may not be given. The wro ig thoughts 
which frighten us and work us such dire mis- 
chief, are not foreign enemies, but rebels, hav- 
ing deserted their true allegiance, their first and 
only satisfying service ; and they will find no 
rest until they are once more turned into the 
right channel, having found which they will 
fall naturally and joyfully into the work which 
alone they were created to fulfill. 



4 8 • STEPS IN THE 

But the subjugation of rebellious subjects 
is often more difficult than the conquest of 
foreign foes. Let us consider some of the 
dangers of this warfare, and how we may meet 
and overcome them. 

And first, almost unconsciously, little dream- 
ing of the sad results, we are apt ourselves to 
encourage our enemies. When accused of 
this we feel inclined to cry, " Is thy servant a 
dog that he should do this thing?" But let 
us think a moment. Are there not thoughts 
faint, vague, but dangerously sweet, laden 
with soft persuasive poison of the will, or 
senses or intellect, thoughts which seem too 
indefinite, too secret, to harm our lives, and 
which we do not turn from readily, indulging 
ourselves in the subtle charms which they 
breathe, although deep down in our con- 
sciences we feel that they are evil ? Macbeth 
nursed and fostered the thought of ambition 
in his heart, without dreaming of the possibil- 
ity of compassing it by unjust measures. The 
poison worked secretly and insidiously, and 
the tender-hearted, honorable man became a 
murderer. The thoughts of wrong and evil 
come to us disguised as angels, and we find 



PA THS OF RIGHTEG USNESS. 49 

them " pleasant to the eyes," but alas, if we 
indulge them, if we encourage the first weak 
thought of wrong which could be so easily 
thrust out and overcome, we will find to our 
horror that the thin edge of the wedge has 
been inserted, that our fortifications have been 
undermined, and that when the enemy shows 
himself in all the hideousness of his undis- 
guised deformity, we are too weak to conquer 
him, and must succumb to the strength of his 
attack; from being too indulgent masters we 
have become slaves bound hand and foot. 

Again, the wrong thoughts may creep into 
our hearts through our lack of watchfulness, 
our indolence, and drowsiness. " Watch and 
pray lest ye enter into temptation." It was 
" while men slept " that the enemy sowed the 
tares. It is by keeping wide-awake to all 
holy influences, by exercising our hearts in 
devotion and love, that its doors are kept 
closed to the foe. 

For, thirdly, if we succeed in turning out 
any evil thought, the only way to keep it out 
is to fill its place immediately with some 
thought of God, some right thought which 
may hold the vacant place against any return. 
4 



5o 



STEPS IN THE 



It is only when he finds the house from which 
he has been expelled empty, that the evil 
spirit gathers seven others worse than himself 
and returns to dwell in it. The thought of 
God, the thought of Jesus Christ, the thought 
of charity to men, all pure, true thoughts 
which come when earnestly prayed for to fill 
the heart of the child of God, these are the 
most potent aids to keep banished thoughts 
from the mind. But we sometimes find that 
the good thoughts are slow in coming, that 
they do not answer to our call for help, that 
there seems some obstacle to their entrance. 
If they do not enter readily we may be very 
sure that there is an obstacle, some hindrance 
to their free flow, and we must examine our 
hearts to find the cause. There may be a 
great slough of selfishness deep down in our 
lives from which emanates all the foul miasma 
of thought which we deplore. We must drain 
it thoroughly before the pure, crystal clear- 
ness of the water of life can well up within us. 
Stagnant selfishness may be the cause of all the 
undreamed-of impurities of thought which hor- 
rify us when they rise to the surface, and in 
its deadly air no right thought, no heavenly 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. 5 1 

impulse can live. There maybe the hindrance 
of some dearly-loved sin, the clinging-to of 
some desire which God through His revela- 
tion, or through our own consciences, has bid- 
den us renounce. Alas, while these remain 
the good thoughts which are to fill and hold 
the places of the evil ones which we are try- 
ing to expel, can find no entrance. " The 
thoughts of the righteous are right" and it is 
only as we follow after righteousness that our 
thoughts can become pure and holy. If we are 
conscientiously endeavoring to open our hearts 
to divine influences, and still the thoughts of 
God do not flow readily at first, as indeed 
after long banishment they can not be ex- 
pected to, let us turn to the right performance 
of deeds for God. If thoughts of kindness do 
not come at command to fill the place of 
hatred or uncharitableness, let us do deeds of 
kindness, and the thought will come uncon- 
sciously. We must often work up from deeds 
to words, and from words to thoughts, and 
having done this we find that the " rule works 
both ways," that the heart having been edu- 
cated to right thoughts, " out of the abun- 
dance of the heart the mouth speaketh,' , and 



52 STEPS IN THE 

that the warmth of loving thoughts inspires 
us to all good deeds. Let us work, then, sys- 
tematically, earnestly, conscientiously, trust- 
ing to God to change the meditations of our 
hearts so that they may be acceptable in His 
sight. 

" Commit thy zvorks unto the Lord, and 
thy thoughts shall be established." 

And lastly, a great help in the conquest of 
unruly thoughts is to assimilate the good 
thoughts of others ; by reading, by hearing, 
and especially by being much with those 
whose thoughts are pure and true and earnest. 
The quiet influence of holy men, whose hearts 
are full of God, infuses a right element into 
our thoughts which silently works a " blood- 
less revolution." Be much with the Saints 
of God, drawing from them the power of holy 
thought. But there is a higher, nobler com- 
panionship in whose close intimacy we can 
fill our soul with the all-conquering fullness of 
pure and heavenly meditation. If we would 
bring every thought captive to Christ we 
must become one with Him in warmest, ten- 
derest union. We must assimilate His high 
and noble thoughts, becoming imbued with 



PA THS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



53 



His spirit, treasuring His words, studying His 
actions, drawing nearer to Him every day in 
deepest love and closest imitation, if we would 
at last be able to say, " we have the mind of 
Christ." Having done this, our thoughts will 
turn joyfully to their willing obedience, bless- 
ing the Conqueror whose captives they have 
become, and we shall sing in happy triumph, 
" In the multitude of my thoughts within me. 
Thy comforts shall delight my soul ! " 



a 




HRISTIAN ! dost thou see them 
On the holy ground, 
How the powers of darkness 
Rage thy steps around ? 
Christian ! up and smite them, 

Counting gain but loss ; 
In the strength that cometh 
By the Holy Cross. 



'•' Christian ! dost thou feel them, 

How they work within, 
Striving, tempting, luring, 

Goading into sin ? 
Christian ! never tremble, 

Never be down-cast ; 
Gird thee for the battle, 

Watch and pray and fast. 



54 



STEPS IN THE 

1 Christian ! dost thou hear them, 

How they speak thee fair? 
' Always fast and vigil ? 

Always watch and prayer'? 
Christian ! answer boldly; 

* While I breathe I pray ! ' 
Peace shall follow battle, 

Night shall end in day. 

' Well I know thy trouble, 

my servant true ; 
Thou art very weary, 

1 was weary too ; 

But that toil shall make thee 

Some day all Mine own, 
And the end of sorrow 

Shall be near My throne.' " 

ST. ANDREW OF CRETE. 



PA THS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



55 



VI. 



THE SEARCHING OF GOD. 



Search vie, God, and know my 
heart.'"'— -Vs. cxxxix. 23. 




S there not a comfort which we often 
miss in the thought that God can 
search us and know us, that the dark- 
ness can not hide our sin from Him, that He 
even u understandeth our thoughts afar off? " 
At first a reading of the 139th Psalm over- 
whelms our poor, weak, consciously sinful 
hearts with an almost oppressive sense of awe. 
Such knowledge is too wonderful for us, and 
before the concluding prayer, " Search me, O 
God," we stop doubting. 

" Is there no baseness we would hide, 
No inner vileness that we dread ? " 

But in reality what comfort there is for us 
in this Omniscience of our Father ! 

We can not search and know ourselves. 



56 STEPS IN THE 

Such knowledge is indeed too wonderful for 
us. Try as we may, and as many of us truly 
do (although it may only be spasmodically 
and with too soon wearied exertion), some 
sins will escape our scrutiny, and we may 
never be cognizant of them until the bright 
light of Christ's Day of Judgment pierces the 
shadows in which they have lain hidden, and 
draws our startled attention to them. But 
God knows them, and even although we be 
ignorant of them ourselves, if we earnestly 
pray to be led into the way everlasting, He 
can bring about a change the extent of which 
may be unknown to us, and some sin we may 
always have been unconscious of, may, indeed, 
through God's working within us, be con- 
quered, and melt away, as an answer to our 
general prayer for holiness, even without 
special reference to that particular form of 
evil, and we ourselves may only know of its 
previous existence by the happier Christianity 
welling up within us after it is gone. Surely 
the thought is a comforting one, when, de- 
spairing of finding our hidden sins, knowing 
that much of evil will undoubtedly be over- 
looked in any self-searching, we can trust that 



PA THS OF RIGH TEO USNESS. 5 7 

God knows each particular sin and shortcom- 
ing, and will provide a cure for it even with- 
out our knowledge, if our true and sincere de- 
sire is to be led in the way everlasting. 

And then, again, what comfort there is in 
the knowledge that God's Omniscience does 
not depend upon anything in ourselves, that no 
choice has been left us in the matter ! We 
would not be likely to say, " Search me, O 
God, and know my heart,'' if we had not first 
been filled with the awful and yet comforting 
consciousness expressed in the opening words 
of the Psalm : " O Lord, Thou hast searched 
me and known me ! " If God our Father, and 
our dear Master, Christ, were all that they 
now are to us except Omniscient, would we 
not, from very love to them, hide some of our 
thoughts, although the hiding of them would 
be an intolerable burden to us? 

There are thoughts which we can not con- 
fess to any one, not from fear, but partly from 
shame, and partly because the very naming of 
them would seem to give them more shape 
and substance than they had before. If we 
felt that our Master did not know them we 
would be apt to think it better to strive 



58 STEPS IN THE 

against them silently, and not to give them 
form upon our lips. We would dread to mar 
our intercourse with Him by giving to " airy 
nothings a local habitation and a name/' not 
because we do not love Him, or dread any pun- 
ishment He might inflict, but because we could 
not bear to open out our evil thoughts before 
One whose " Well done " we are longing so to 
hear; and we would struggle on blindly, hop- 
ing to overcome by His general grace the 
faults which He should never know. And 
yet, what an unhappy life it would be ! How 
often would w r e resolve to tell all, and then 
fall back helplessly with the cry, " I can not ! " 
The great sins, the glaring faults, perhaps, 
would drive us to confession ; but the little- 
nesses, the weaknesses, the impurities of spirit, 
which it would seem impossible to bring out 
in all their bareness to the light ; how they 
would rankle and fester ! Even if He should 
say in all tenderness, " Confess and be for- 
given/' we would draw back, and long to leave 
Him in His ignorance. But now, when each 
of us can say, " O Lord, Thou knowest all 
things, Thou knowest that I love Thee, as 
well as Thou knowest all the black crevices 



PA THS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



59 



of my heart, forgive me for what I can not 
even distinctly specify, although / know and 
Thou knowest, and cleanse Thou me, Lord, 
from secret faults "; now indeed is the load 
lifted and the conscience cleansed, and the 
heart lightened ; and, having once felt the 
blessing of God's searching light illuminating 
our dark places, we must feel humbled indeed 
at what He must have seen there ; but the 
relief of knowing that our heavy secret is 
shared by One who sympathizes with us, who 
is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, 
will be so great that with perfect sincerity 
and earnest desire we shall pray daily, " Search 
me, O God ! " 



KNOW my sheep/' If you would 
think rightly of the Son of Man, think 
of the Person who knows thoroughly every- 
thing that each one of you is feeling, and can not 
utter to others or himself — every temptation 
from riches, from poverty, from solitude, from 
society, from gifts of intellect, from want of 
them, from the gladness of the spirit, from 
the barrenness and dreariness of it, from the 
warmth of affection and from the drying up 



60 STEPS IN THE 

of affection, from the anguish of doubt and 
the dullness of indifference, from the whirl- 
wind of passion and the calm which succeeds 
it, from the vile thoughts which spring out of 
fleshly appetites and indulgences, from the 
darker, more terrible suggestions which are 
presented to the inner will. Believe that He 
knows all these, that He knows you. And 
then, believe this also, that all He knows is 
through intense, inmost sympathy — not with 
the evil that is assaulting you — but with you 
who are assaulted by it. Believe that knowl- 
edge, in this, the Scripture sense of it — the 
human as well as the divine sense of it — is 
absolutely inseparable from sympathy. 

F. D. MAURICE. 




E whom no praise can reach, is aye 
Man's least attempts approving ; 
Whom justice makes all-merciful, 
Omniscience makes all-loving. 

How Thou canst think so well of us, 

And be the God Thou art, 
Is darkness to my intellect, 

But sunshine to my heart. FABER. 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. ft z 




VII. 

THE MAJESTY OF GOD. 

u The Lord reigncth ; He ts clothed 
with majesty." 1 — Psalm xciii. i. 

S there not a tendency in our modern 
religion to neglect the thought of 
the Majesty of God ? The reaction 
against the hollow forms of a debased ritual 
at the Reformation, filled the minds of men 
with the dread of beauty or ceremony in their 
worship. And the joy of once more receiving 
their Master into their hearts, not as a King 
to whom intercession must be made through 
innumerable indirect agencies, but as the loving 
and sympathizing Friend, the " man of sor- 
rows, acquainted with grief," led them almost 
to forget the First Person of the Trinity in 
their love and devotion for the Second. This 
was but natural, and partially, at least, right ; 
and we, too, all of us Christians, find such com- 
fort in the close companionship of Jesus, in 



62 STEPS IN THE 

His loving condescension, that I think we 
often miss out of our religion the grandeur 
and majesty which certainly form a large 
element of our Scriptures. 

There is a chord in the human heart which 
can only be struck by the power of this very 
glory and grandeur. The note of awe is want- 
ing in the harmony of worship without this 
awakening of the sense of majesty. How 
eagerly does humanity gape and stare at the 
spectacular surroundings of an earthly throne ! 
How ready we are to throw ourselves upon 
the ground in very ecstasy of hero-worship ; 
yes, even to cast ourselves under the wheels 
of any awe-inspiring Juggernaut ! And this 
sentiment, even when purely of the earth, 
earthy, is an elevating one. The sound of 
the trumpet and the waving banner can in- 
spire a martial valor, an enthusiasm of hero- 
ism, which, without these seemingly useless 
adjuncts,' would be wanting in the bravest 
regiment. 

And it is this natural desire of the human 
heart that God answers by the inspiration of 
such marvellous pageantry as that of St. John's 
Revelation, filling our souls with the beauty 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNE SS. 6 7 

«-• 

of the golden throne and the echoes of the 
cathedral -like service of the white -robed 
angels. Take the book of Revelation, and 
read, with soul opened to receive the grand 
impression, the description of the throne in 
Heaven, with the rainbow round about it, " in 
sight like unto an emerald " ; the four-and- 
twenty elders with their crowns of gold ; the 
lightnings and thunderings and voices pro- 
ceeding from the throne ; the seven lamps 
burning before it ; the sea of glass like unto 
crystal ; the solemn chant of " Holy, holy, 
holy," from the four beasts, with its refrain 
from the prostrate elders, " Thou art worthy, 
O Lord, to receive glory and honor and 
power!" the harps and trumpets ; the golden 
vials of incense ; the voices of angels and 
beasts and elders, " ten thousand times ten 
thousand, and thousands of thousands," say- 
ing, " Worthy the Lamb"; and then the 
loud chorus taken up by " every creature 
which is in heaven, and on the earth, and 
under the earth, and such as are in the sea," 
saying, " Blessing, and honor, and glory, and 
po.ver be unto Him that sitteth upon the 
throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and 



6 4 



STEPS IN THE 



ever!" Could anything fill with brighter pa- 
geantry, with more glorious music, with higher 
enthusiasms of awe-inspiring worship and ado- 
ration the soul of man ? There are times when 
our religion needs just such an inspiration, 
when we can most truly say, " It is good for 
us to be here." 

But such exaltation is not good for " hu- 
man nature's daily food," unless there is added 
to it what in the Scriptures we always find 
finishing up and rounding off any rapt con- 
templation of heavenly glory. 

God is clothed with majesty ; but let us not 
admire the glorious " trappings and shows" 
of His power without remembering that, 
although His garments are Majesty, He Him- 
self is Love ! The centre of the worship, 
whose awful grandeur we have been thrilled 
with, is a Lamb. The Son of Man, standing 
amidst the golden candlesticks, His eyes like 
flame, His voice as the sound of many waters, 
His countenance as the sun shining in its 
strength, speaks, and His words are : " Fear 
not!" He that sitteth on the throne shall 
" dwell among" His children, and the tender- 
est of loving acts shall be gently performed 



PATHS OF RIGH TEOUSNESS. 



65 



by the King whom we have seen in His 
beauty ; " He shall wipe away all tears from 
their eyes." 

Yes, surely the splendor of the Lord of 
hosts is an inspiring and ennobling element 
of the Divine Revelation ; but we must not 
dwell on it alone. There must be deep down 
in our souls the quiet love, the every-day peace 
which cannot be disturbed, the living image 
of the Son of Man, held with childlike trust 
and familiarity close to our heart of hearts. 

The great poet of England, who understood 
with such wonderful penetration the thoughts 
and tendencies of humanity, makes the poor, 
dying courtier, who had been attendant upon 
a spendthrift prince, and had been stained and 
spotted in his rough contact with the world 
of dissipation and folly, when nearing his end, 
talk not of the many processions and pageants 
which he had ^witnessed, the army reviews 
with their shining armor and floating banners, 
the court with its gorgeous costumes and 
splendid ceremony, but says simply and 
touchingly, " He babbled of green fields." 

And so it is with the Revelation of St. 
John. He has been describing the New Je- 

5 



66 STEPS IN THE 

rusalem in all the brilliancy of precious stones 
and gold and pearls. We can almost see the 
city more glorious than any air-castle of men, 
descending as with the glory of God out of 
the heavens. But this is not the picture which 
he leaves with us as we close the book. His 
cry of " Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly," is 
inspired by yet another vision. The last de- 
scription with w 7 hich he fills the soul of his 
readers is one of a pure river, clear as crystal, 
and of the tree of life with its gentle leaves 
of healing, and its monthly fruits of plenty ; 
and, sweetest of all, the Lamb standing where 
we may " see His face." 

The Lord, who is clothed in majesty, mak- 
eth us to lie down in green pastures, and 
leadeth us beside the still waters. And " His 
banner over us is Love." 




Y God, how wonderful Thou art, 
Thy Majesty how bright, 
How beautiful thy mercy-seat, 
In depths of burning light ! 



How dread are Thine eternal years, 

O everlasting Lord ! 
By prostrate spirits day and night 

Incessantly adored ! 



PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

How beautiful, how beautiful 

The sight of Thee must be ; 
Thine endless wisdom, boundless power, 

And awful purity ! 

Oh, how I fear Thee, living God ! 

With deepest, tenderest fears ; 
And worship Thee with trembling hope, 

And penitential tears. 

Yet I may love Thee, too, O Lord ! 

Almighty as Thou art ; 
For Thou hast stooped to ask of me 

The love of my poor heart. faber. 



6 7 



68 STEPS IN THE 




VIII. 

THE PERSONAL RELATION OF GOD TO US. 

" The secret of the Lord is with them 
that fear Him" — Psalm xxv. 14. 

OD'S outward dealings with His creat- 
ures are one thing, His private un- 
derstanding (if one may reverently 
call it such) with His nearest disciples is quite 
another. And those who are drawing nearer 
in humble love to their Master day by day, 
feel increasingly the opening out of this secret 
of His. It is as though the language, which 
at first seemed a foreign one to us, and which 
we only could understand in the simplest and 
most practical of commands, were becoming 
gradually clear and intelligible, as though 
we had heard, each for himself or herself, a 
whisper of that new name which is the per- 
sonal and private bond between each individ- 
ual and God. 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. 69 

Knowing that the " Our Father" is all-em- 
bracing in its breadth of application, there is 
still something which strongly appeals to a hu- 
man craving for individuality in the thought 
that we each personally have a secret with 
our God ; that He calls us by our own name, 
chosen by His loving thoughtfulness, and that 
each of us may cry not only " Our Father," 
but with all the strength of the possessive 
pronoun in the singular, "My Lord, and My 
God ! " 

This desire for a strong personal relation 
between each of us separately and our Lord, 
is, indeed, often the cause of a latent and 
suppressed dissatisfaction in our weak and 
jealous human hearts. We know that this 
love is personal and individual ; we believe it 
in theory, and yet we can not help feeling lost 
in a vague generality when we read that He 
" loved the world," that we are all His children, 
that there seems to be no distinction made in 
His love or care. It is a selfish feeling, and 
one which we try to suppress, ashamed of its 
lightest whisper in our hearts ; and yet w T ho 
has not felt it ? We seem to lose our very 
personality in the crowd, in the " great multi- 



70 



STEPS IN THE 



tudes ' ; our individuality becomes indistinct, 
and we long for some direct relation to our 
Lord, some feeling of peculiar nearness. 

Sitting some time ago on the sea -shore 
watching the full harvest-moon rising in all 
its mellow glory over the restlessly tossing 
ocean, I noticed how direct was the golden 
path of the moonlight over the dark waters, 
straight from the horizon to my very feet. 
It seemed as though the track were made for 
me alone. Everywhere else the waves lay un- 
illumined to my eyes ; I could see no other 
moonlit path ; to me it seemed as though I 
alone were in direct and secret communica- 
tion with the heavenly glory. And yet all 
the many groups scattered far and near along 
the cliffs could appropriate the moon-track as 
well and as truly as I. The moon lighted us 
all, but to each one of us individually there 
was a separate and direct avenue open, all 
our own, a secret path which no one else 
might know. 

Is it not just so with God's relation to us? 
He is like the beautiful moon shedding radi- 
ance on all the world, and yet, across the 
dark and troubled sea of life, there is a dis- 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. 7 1 

tinct track of individual care and love for each 
separate child of His which it may claim as 
its very own. 

God's love is as deep as it is broad. It is 
only after Christ has been dwelling in our 
hearts for a time that we begin dimly to com- 
prehend what is the breadth, and length, and 
depth, and height ; and to know the love of 
Christ which passeth knowledge 

HUT thy door upon thee, and call unto Jesus, thy 

beloved. 
Stay with Him in thy closet ; for thou shalt not 

find so great peace anywhere else The inward man 

He often visiteth, and hath with him sweet discourses, 
pleasant solace, much peace, familiarity exceeding won- 
derful. — Imitation of Christ. 



LITTLE heart of mine ! shall pain 

Or sorrow make thee moan, 
When all this God is all for thee, 
A Father all thine own ? faber. 





72 



STEPS IN THE 




IX. 



WALKING, RUNNING, FLYING. 

"Do not I Jill heaven and earth? 
saith the Lord.'*'' — Jer. xxiii. 24. 

HERE is a tendency in the human 
soul to think of God as filling heaven, 
but it is not so easy to remember 
that the earth also is filled with His glory ; 
a tendency which leads us, like the Samari- 
tans, to desire to worship God on the mount- 
ains, but to doubt that He can open " fount- 
ains in the midst of the valley," that no 
" depth " can separate us from His love. 

Dr. Bushnell has a very suggestive sermon 
on the text, " When they stood they let down 
their wings" ; the idea being that contact with 
material things, and dependence upon them, 
naturally causes a folding of one's spiritual 
pinions, a lowering of one's heavenly desires. 
Leaving his very beautiful interpretation of 
this thought, let us wander a little into a side 



PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



73 



path, striking from the direction into which 
his train of argument would lead us. 

There is a feeling of much sadness, and 
often of great discouragement, in the remem- 
brance of how much more we use our feet 
than our wings, and how often when the 
wings seem to be doing their best, and one 
is really beginning to soar, the attraction of 
gravitation is suddenly felt with overwhelm- 
ing force, and, becoming too strong for us, 
draws our feet resistlessly down, not only to 
walk on the ground, but even to sink in the 
mire ! 

As Miss Greenwell says in her " Patience 
of Hope," " There is a sadness in all Idealism ; 
it lifts the soul into a region where it cannot 
now dwell ; it must return to the earth, and 
it is hard for it not to do so at the shock of a 
keen revulsion, the dashing of the foot against 
a stone." 

But then, again, looking at the subject in a 
little different light, we must remember that, 
as mortals and not angels yet, our feet are 
very necessary and not to be neglected with 
impunity. Let us look for a time upon our 
wings as typifying our spiritual aspirations, 



74 



STEPS IN THE 



longings, ecstasies, and our feet as being the 
daily and prosaic round of duties, our point 
of contact with humanity, even our lower and 
more systematic religious devotions and tasks. 
Viewed in this light, our feet must be taken 
as good care of as our wings. One is so apt 
to rush from one extreme to the other, and 
either to forget all about one's wings, or else 
to strain them into a too constant use, for- 
getting altogether to rest, as even the lightest, 
swiftest-flying bird must needs do at times, 
upon the solid earth. But even as " the eye 
can not say to the hand, I have no need of 
thee," so can not the wings say to the feet, 
"We have no need of you !" If one does 
not exercise oneself in the plain walking of 
every-day life, the very flights of the soul will 
grow weak, and even the spirit in man will 
wish at last, like Noah's dove, to find " rest 
for the sole of its feet." 

In plain language, even aspiration and re- 
ligious ecstasy will grow first vague, and then 
cold, if there is no solid ground for duty to 
walk on between times. But this is only 
taught by experience. When one first be- 
comes able to use one's wings it seems as 



PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



75 



though walking were no better than imprison- 
ment. If we have been particularly thrilled 
with a sense of God's beauty ; if our love for 
Jesus has been warmer, and our feeling of 
nearness to Him more vivid than usual, we 
are almost sure to feel a sort of repugnance to 
any fixed rule of reading, or praying, or doing 
any duty ; an aversion to bringing down our 
thoughts from a vast contemplation of heav- 
enly things, a rhapsody of love and worship, 
to a stricter attention to the detail of service. 
It is as though one rejoiced in the blaze of 
the fire, but rebelled against the prosaic work 
of gathering fuel for its continuance. But 
the very truest of truths was spoken by 
a Kempis long ago when he said : " Yet the 
light omission of spiritual exercises seldom 
passes without loss to our souls." 

The Christian life on earth is a good deal 
like the training of an artist for his work. 
First there is the artistic impulse, the feeling 
of being called to his vocation, and the will- 
ingness to sacrifice himself to its toil in order 
to reap its reward. But the initiatory steps 
are hard and seemingly inartistic. There is 
the slow endeavor to make a straight line, or 



7 6 



STEPS IN THE 



to form correctly an arm or hand, some single 
uninteresting detail of feature. That is like 
the first doing of the Will after having been 
roused to accept with love the vocation of a 
Christian life, the striving after righteousness 
in the first slow steps of Christian progress. 
Then suddenly comes the inspiration for the 
whole, the blocking in, in grand effective out- 
lines, which fills the artist with ardor and ad- 
miration ; the sketching of beautiful concep- 
tions, which, in the rapid development of his 
idea, seems to be at first the one thing need- 
ful to the eager scholar; and, enraptured with 
his progress, he forgets that, after all, it is but 
outline. This is also like the second stage in 
the Christian life. The sudden bursting upon 
one of the beauty and grandeur of God, and 
of the life in Him ; the spreading of one's 
wings for the first time, and soaring to where 
one breathes in the first full breath of Heaven. 
One feels as though nothing could be needed 
more ; as though the rest of one's life must 
be one long act of adoration, as though the 
soul could enjoy itself forever in the sketchy 
vagueness of the heavenward-stretching out- 
line. 



PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



77 



But Christian and artist must both come 
back to the point from which they started, 
only that now the glorious outline remaining 
with them vivifies the labor of going over the 
detail, and of filling in with all the careful 
lights and shades. For the outline must be 
rounded with numberless little lines of shade, 
and spots of light, the features must be 
brought out in their minutest details, and 
although the breadth of outline is retained, 
and the grand conception warms the heart, 
yet even these must be for the time kept in 
the background, while the exactest working 
in of minutiae is necessary for the very perfec- 
tion and life of the whole. We must come 
back from our happy bird's-eye views of life 
in our Master, to fill it all in with minute 
labors of love for Him. After an hour of 
" familiarity exceeding wonderful," we must 
put even our own personal intercourse with 
Him aside in order to do some service for 
Him, whether it be a kindness to others, a 
regular reading or study, or a fighting of some 
bad habit, or known fault. And the smaller 
thematter, the more distasteful will it be, and 
just in consequence the more necessary. All 



78 



STEPS IN THE 



the weary details of common life go to the 
filling in of our outline, the copying stroke 
for stroke of our great Pattern, so that when 
He shall appear we may be like Him ! Do 
not weary of your work, for " they that wait 
upon the Lord shall renew their strength ; 
they shall mount up with wings as the eagle ; 
shall run and not be weary ; and they shall 
walk and not faint. " 



ATHER, I know that all my life 
Is portioned out for me ; 
And the changes that are sure to come 




I do not fear to see ; 
But I ask Thee for a present mind 
Intent on pleasing Thee 

I ask Thee for the daily strength 

To none that ask denied, 
And a mind to blend with outward life, 

While keeping at Thy side ; 
Content to fill a little space, 

If Thou be glorified 

In a service which Thy will appoints 

There are no bonds for me ; 
For my inmost heart is taught the Truth 

That makes Thy children free ; 
And a life of self-renouncing love 

Is a life of liberty. ANNA WARING. 



PA THS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 



79 



****! 



X. 

ENTHUSIASM. 

"*' But it is good to be zealously affect- 
ed."— Qkl. iv. 18. 

AVING meditated upon the necessity 
of exercising ourselves systematically 
and constantly in the prosaic round 
of daily duties, let us now consider more in 
detail the pendant truth which we have al- 
ready referred to, and which alone can keep 
the Christian life rightly balanced — the neces- 
sity of encouraging the flights of our religious 
enthusiasm. The impulse to enthusiasm is 
very strong in many natures, and no one is 
utterly without seasons of excitement, when 
the mind and soul are at tension, when the 
heart expands, when one seems to have reach- 
ed some mountain-height from which one has 



8o STEPS IN THE 

an overpowering longing to soar into the 
encompassing blue. 

But the question comes to us again and 
again, " Is it well to indulge these moments 
of ecstasy ?" The tendency of us all is to be 
ashamed of our hours of heart-stirring emo- 
tion after they are over; we are filled with 
shame-facedness at having betrayed ourselves, 
at having shown our inner vitality, if only 
to our own consciousness. The actual life 
seems too dull and prosaic to be a good nour- 
isher of poetical aspirations, and we sink to 
its level with a reaction whose hopeless sense 
of dull and commonplace reality is so hard to 
bear that we wearily sigh — " It were better 
never to have known anything different, the 
return had been less bitter and unnerving! " 

After reading the inspiring thoughts of some 
strong and hopeful writer, and being filled 
with the sense of the possible nobility of man, 
the grandeur capable of being brought out of 
us, the great aim of some inspiring work 
urged on by heroic aspirations, we feel for the 
moment infected by the noble impulse of his 
words; we feel that we, too, might be heroes. 
But the reaction comes, the strong tension is 



PA TBS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. 8 1 

relaxed, our common-sense looks scornfully 
at our blushing and shrinking enthusiasm ; 
we begin to think it high-strung and imprac- 
ticable, and turn our backs to its light with a 
shrug and shake of the head, half-sad, half- 
disdainful, murmuring : " That was fine writ- 
ing, but it don't mean anything ! " 

And so with our religion. An eloquent 
and earnest sermon will stir our torpid souls 
into eager excitement ; we hear the noble 
music of the u Messiah," and as we rise to our 
feet at the " Hallelujah Chorus," we are thrill- 
ed through and through with intense homage 
and adoration ; we read some word of the 
Master which happens to come home to our 
hearts with some new meaning, and every- 
thing is suffused with a heavenly splendor; 
we seem to walk on air, and to be lifted above 
all earthly considerations. But oh, how in- 
finitely sad is the inevitable descent ! An 
hour or two after such divine communion, 
after having seen Heaven opened and the 
angels of God ascending and descending, 
we feel, not as Jacob did in his childlike 
trust, that it was a vision from God to us, 
but that we have been dreaming ; that our 
6 



82 STEPS IN THE 

imaginations had run away with us, and that 
we have been sadly, pitiably out of the reality. 
Often all that is left to us after such a period 
of enthusiasm is a vague and general belief in 
a God who seems out of sight, out of hearing, 
and whom we can only say we love without 
having the words come from deeper than our 
lips ! We try to stir our feelings into life, 
but they seem to have been all evaporated in 
the late climax, and we can only wait, like 
the impotent man, for another moving of the 
waters. 

It is the utter sadness and desolation of 
these reactions which makes us doubt the wis- 
dom of ever leaving the " even tenor " of our 
ways ; and we bitterly resolve never to mount 
to any pinnacle, for fear that in our necessary 
descent we should dash our foot against a 
stone ! 

And yet it is " good to be zealously affect ed." 
Enthusiasts have done all the great work of 
the world. It is the very fanatics of a cause 
who infuse the necessary energy into its de- 
velopment. It was a noble enthusiasm which 
caused the poor fishermen, busy with their 
nets, to cast them aside, and " straightway 



PA THS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 83 

follow the Master." Surely their hearts must 
have been filled with an emotion quite other 
than the plodding common-sense of every-day 
life to induce them to leave all and follow 
Him ! If there had been no enthusiasm, no 
visions of an expanded imagination yearning 
toward heavenly things, no impulse of self- 
forgetful, impetuous devotion to an ideal of 
life beyond the seen realities ; if there had 
been none of these in the world at the time 
of our Saviour's Incarnation, He had had no 
followers, no sympathizers in His work, no 
friends. 

And surely it was the highest, holiest of 
all enthusiasms which armed our Master for 
His painful life on earth. It was the " joy" 
which, through all His trials and sorrows, He 
kept within His heart, and which is but an- 
other name for an inspired impulse of enthu- 
siasm, that kept Him from fainting ; it was 
the " joy " set before Him which enabled Him 
to endure the cross. And what but a divine 
enthusiasm could have kindled His eye and 
strengthened His arm when He cast out the 
money-changers from the temple, so that the 
disciples remembered the words of the Psalm : 



8 4 



STEPS IN THE 



"The zeal of thine house hath eaten me 
up"? 

Yes, a right enthusiasm is a potent help to 
the Christian life. It carries along others in 
its forward rush, and gets work done for 
God which otherwise would remain undone. 
" Nothing is so catching as enthusiasm. " 

Let us nourish and foster it ; let us not clip 
the wings of our souls when we feel them 
beating with desire to seek the sky ; let us 
not even be frightened at the thought of the 
relapse. There may be, nay, there must be 
hours of sadness and discouragement. These, 
too, are sent in God's wisdom for our training 
and discipline. But He has given us a way of 
escape, even in these times of despondency, 
through which we can reach the freedom of 
the open air, seeing the clear sky above us, 
even if we can not soar into its depths of blue, 
and feeling the soft breath of freshening 
breezes, although we may not be wafted upon 
them above the earth. And the way of escape 
is this: Find something to do, and do it with 
your might. Enthusiasm, to be ennobling, to 
leave us better and purer and holier, must be 
worked off, and not allowed to die out in in- 



PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



85 



action. The disciples did not leave their nets 
to sit and dream, but to become u fishers of 
men." The zeal of Jesus Christ inspired a 
life which was the busiest, the most unwearied, 
the most energetic ever lived. He did not 
dream ; He u went about doing good." 

This is the secret of a right and holy en- 
thusiasm. Steam will burst the boiler it it is 
repressed ; it must find a way of escape by 
being the motive power which brings wonders 
to pass, and does the work of a world. Work 
done for God, trusting in Him, moved by the 
impulse of a great enthusiasm for Him, draw- 
ing strength for our service in the higher 
moments of our worship, this it is which will 
make the balance hang evenly, and give a just 
equilibrium to our religion. There need be 
no fear then of dashing our feet against the 
stones, no matter how high the pinnacle of 
our devotion. " For He shall give His angels 
charge over thee to keep thee in all thy 
ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands." 
" I will set him on high, because he hath 
known my name." 

OW much there is to remind the believer of 
what the two chosen disciples must have 
felt when they descended from tlie Mount 




86 STEPS IN THE 

of Transfiguration. For he, too, has known mo- 
ments, perhaps hours, on which the calm of eternity 
seemed already to rest, — still, blessed seasons in 
which he has beheld, not only Moses and Elias, but 
his own life also, transfigured in his beloved Lord ; 
times in which things present were intelligible, things 
distant clear. And he, too, has come down, like 
them, to meet the full shock of this life's perplexity, 
to be met by human anguish, the struggles of the 

demoniac In Christ, as well as for Christ, they 

are to be counted happy who endure ; who bear all 
things, silence, delay, aridity, for thus He trains His 
athletes.' ' 

Patience of Hope, DORA GREEN WELL. 




ARTHLY desire, confused unrest and longing, 
All sad, dumb yearning for some vague Ideal, 
Mad hopes and wishes, which at times come 
thronging 
Into the heart, to undermine the Real — 

How shall we fight with their insidious sadness, 
Whose blighting forces every hour increase, 

Or free our souls from the fast-growing madness 
Of earthly longings which can find no peace? 

Like some great, devastating, turbid river, 

The current of desire rushes down, 
Increasing, widening, hurrying onward ever 

Until all happy duty is o'erthrown. 



PA THS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 87 

Alas ! Humanity must needs be yearning ; 

Earth's hard realities oppress the soul ; 
No saint or stoic learns to still the burning 

Of fevered longings pressing toward a goal. 

And if this goal be earthly good or pleasure, 

Then truly is desire an evil thing, 
Wasting its throbbing strength to chase a treasure 

Which evermore escapes on mocking wing. 

But longing may be holy, turned toward heaven, 
And Duty's path may be by yearning trod ; 

Joy may to dull realities be given, 

Choosing the true Ideal — which is God ! 

E. R. C. 



88 STEPS IN THE 



XI 



DRYNESS OF SOUL. 




" But 7ioiv our soul is dried away" 
—Num. xi. 6. 



HERE are some similes which, with 
the inherent love of metaphor and 
symbol of an Eastern people, occur 
again and again throughout our Scriptures. 
Spiritualizing the old pagan worship of light, 
we have seen how constantly the fulness 
of life, the life in God and Christ, is typified 
by the Sun, the morning light, the glory of 
a cloudless day. Again, with all the depth of 
tenderness, does the Lord ring the changes 
through book after book of the Bible, on that 
touching symbol of His guiding love, the 
Eastern shepherd. The representing of God 
and His people as Shepherd and sheep is 
repeated over and over again, the loved and 
chosen type employed by prophet after 



PA THS OF RIGH TEO USNESS. gg 

prophet, by Christ Himself, by the Apostles 
after Him. 

Another simile in constant use by the in- 
spired writers, reappearing time and again 
through all the varied phases of the life of the 
children of Israel, and later of the Christian 
Church, is the one which we now desire to 
meditate upon — moisture and drought, as 
expressing in eloquent metaphor the fresh 
healthfulness, or sickly sterility of the Chris- 
tian life. The simile has so taken possession 
of our minds, that a dryness of religious 
feeling " seems no longer a poetical expres- 
sion, but a prosaic statement of a sad, yet 
frequently recurring phase of human weak- 
ness. Who has not known the grievous ex- 
perience of trying to draw refreshment from 
one's springs of emotion and finding them dried 
up; of endeavoring to cultivate some flower 
of grace, and being frustrated in one's efforts 
by the hardness of the parched ground, upon 
which no living plant can be seen ? We may 
have been rejoicing in the " early dew " of our 
goodness, the earth has seemed soft and re- 
ceptive, the young and tender shoots of our 
soul have been glistening with a healthful 



9 



STEPS IN THE 



moisture, and to be laborers in the vineyard 
of God has seemed an easy and refreshing 
task. But alas ! the long, hot, trying day has 
succeeded the cool softness of the morning 
air, and we see our flowers fade, the ground 
of our hearts turn dry and parched and un- 
productive, and the stillness and torpidity of 
death creep over all our warm emotions, our 
bright hopes, our eager resolves. " Your 
goodness is as a morning-cloud, and as the 
early dew it goeth away." 

These seasons of religious drought differ 
from either doubt or depression ; instead of 
the murky atmosphere and dark over-cloud- 
ing of depression, or the rough blasts and 
heavy thunderings of the soul tempest-tossed 
by doubt, there is the dead, emotionless 
sterility, the incapacity of emotion, the 
parched torpor of a joyless and feelingless 
dryness. Whence does this drought come, 
and how may we water the dry ground 
of our souls from which every bud of hope, 
every freshly-opened blossom of enthusiasm, 
every perfect flower of love seems to have 
shriveled away? 

Very often this state of dryness is caused by 



PA THS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. gi 

neglect. A careless disuse of the means 
which have been given us of keeping fresh 
and active the emotions of our religious life ; 
the omission of constant prayer, the neglect 
of our devotional reading, the cutting our- 
selves off from the " refreshing'' which " shall 
come from the presence of the Lord "; ah, how 
often we thoughtlessly leave our souls to grow 
hard, and dry, and parched from such causes ! 
We live on, careless of the daily change within 
us, imagining ourselves to be doing well, never 
doubting that the Lord we profess to follow 
is watering our soul-gardens with His grace, 
needing no help of ours ; and suddenly, when 
we have a desire to be comforted with the life 
and freshness of the emotions and aspirations 
which before have cheered us with their 
fragrance, we turn to our souls and find them 
withered! Without our help even God can 
not prevent our souls from becoming "a land 
of great drought." 

Sometimes the hardness and indifference of 
heart, the lack of all impulse and emotion 
comes to us as a punishment for enthusiasm 
which has died out without fruit. As we 
noticed before, enthusiasm to be beneficial 



9 2 STEPS IN THE 

must be worked off, it must be productive of 
some good result. If allowed to die out, it is 
sure to leave a void which induces the very 
emptiness and torpidity of religious feeling 
which we are considering. It was because the. 
fig-tree bore no fruit that it withered away. 
It is the chastening hand of the Lord which is 
laid upon us at these times, and having brought 
ourselves into a condition when the displeasure 
of God is shown by making our " springs 
dry," we must remember that He chasten- 
eth whom He loveth, and that the dryness of 
our souls has been sent as an enemy to con- 
quer, to the trying of our force, the proving 
of our armor, and that if we rouse ourselves to 
resistance, the trial will appear as a blessing 
when we have " overcome." The torpor 
which steals over us, the drowsiness as of the 
man buried in a snow-drift without the energy 
to do battle to the insidious cold which pen- 
etrates his being, this is the hardest foe to 
fight, and one to whose overcoming we must 
awaken every resource. There is no enthusi- 
asm to give us courage, no warmth of impulse 
to carry us resistlessly forward. It is the slow 
and difficult task of pumping water into our 



PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



93 



dry wells, of diligent digging and watering. 
There are times when the Christian life seems 
to resolve itself into a " patient waiting for 
Christ," a " patient continuance in well-doing," 
and then it is hard not to succumb to the 
stealthy, undermining influence of indifference 
and coldness. Christ's words, " But me ye 
have not always with you," may be taken in 
a spiritual as well as a literal sense, and it is 
when entering into one of these states of sep- 
aration from the conscious presence of our 
Master that we must pay strictest heed to His 
command, " Watch and pray." A perfect 
Christian character should never be separated 
from the vivid realization of the nearness of 
Jesus, but in this incomplete and imperfect 
human life of ours, we must all needs feel the 
dryness of the seasons when our sins have hid 
His face from us. Even saintly old Thomas 
a Kempis must have been distressed with 
such periods of trial, for over and over again 
he reverts to them, trying in his sadness to 
see the reason for them, and drawing lessons 
of warning, and advancement, and even com- 
fort from the drought which God had sent 
upon his soul. " Thinkest thou that thou 



Q4 STEPS IN THE 

shalt always have spiritual consolations at 
thine own will? My saints had not always 
such, but they had many afflictions and sun- 
dry temptations, and feelings of great deso- 
lateness." " Nor is it in this only that thy 
progress in spiritual life consists, when thou 
hast the grace of comfort; but rather when 
with humility, self-denial, and patience, thou 
endurest the withdrawing thereof; provided 
thou do not then become listless in the exer- 
cise of prayer, nor suffer the rest of thy 
accustomed duties to be at all neglected. 
Rather do thou cheerfully perform what lieth 
in thee, according to the best of thy power and 
understanding; and do not wholly neglect 
thyself because of the dryness or anxiety of 
mind which thou feelest." " Stir up my heart 
toward Thee, and set me free from heavy list- 
lessness ! " 

When we have fallen into one of these 
periods of u heavy listlessness," how may we 
arouse ourselves, how moisten the dry ground 
of our hearts? 

One of the difficulties which meet us in any 
attempts to a more lively interest in spiritual 
things at such a time is the utter incapacity 



PA THS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



95 



of realization. Our creed seems a dream, the 
great objects of our love and desire melt away 
into vague shadows; there is nothing vivid, 
nothing tangible in our faith. God is to us a 
name; we are conscious of having felt a loyal 
and enthusiastic worship for Him in the past, 
but now we can only say that we have wor- 
shipped, and that we know we were right in 
so doing, but " our souls are dried away," we 
feel no life, no stirring of the emotions at the 
Name which has often held such divine com- 
fort and inspiration for us. We look within 
and wonder if " this cold clay clod was man's 
heart." We think of our Jesus, whom we 
have loved with such deep and tender devo- 
tion, and we find our conception of Him 
blurred, our realization of Him faint and pass- 
ing away. Was it a Dream that we loved? 
Have we been worshipping an Ideal? So it 
seems to us, and no call upon our hearts is 
able to arouse a sense of reality within them. 
This difficulty of realization is often greatly 
helped by changing one's position, and look- 
ing at some other part of the great truths of 
our religion. If our eyes are strained steadily 
upon any one spot, it will grow more and 



g6 STEPS IN THE 

more vague and blurred. The outline will 
become indistinct, the form will fade away 
until there is nothing left before our aching 
eyes but shadows. If we repeat one word 
over and over again, we will find chat it grad- 
ually loses all meaning, till at last we wonder 
what strange jumble of letters we are mutter- 
ing. And so it may be with our religion. We 
may dwell upon a certain side of truth, we 
may ponder upon one of the many elements of 
the character of Jesus Christ, we may study 
one phase of His life until the reality seems 
to die out of it. For the time we have ex- 
hausted our power of thought on this part of 
God's revelation, and if we try to force our 
mind to work on in the same track the outline 
grows blurred, we lose our hold on it, and 
reality becomes a dream. If, then, we feel the 
numbness of this want of realization stealing 
upon us, if we have studied the death of 
Jesus until we feel that our hearts are be- 
coming callous to His sufferings, let us for the 
moment shut off from our minds this blessed 
portion of His work for us, and turn our 
thoughts upon His life; or, if we have grown 
accustomed to call Him by any one of His 



PA THS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



97 



many names until the word grows to lose its 
meaning and does not convey the fulness of 
its significance, let us set it aside for a while 
and call Him in our hearts by another. Let 
us ring the changes upon the dear and well- 
known scenes of His earthly life, upon the 
tender, significant names which He has given 
us by which to call Him, upon the many per- 
fect attributes of His divine and human char- 
acter. We will often find this simple remedy 
sufficient to bring out in fresh life and vivid 
colors the seemingly dead vegetation of our 
soul-gardens. 

Another difficulty in our seasons of drought, 
is the seeming impossibility of meditation. 
We can force ourselves to read, or to work, 
but to think or pray is intensely difficult. Our 
thoughts wander, we can not stir them into 
action, and if we conscientiously set ourselves 
the duty of locking our doors and trying for 
a fixed time to meditate upon spiritual things, 
the result is a disastrous defeat, and we seem 
more dry and lifeless after it is over than be- 
fore. And yet surely meditation is right and 
necessary in the Christian life! Certainly it 
is; but one does not give the same dose even 

7 



9 8 



STEPS W THE 



of healthful tonic to the enfeebled and delicate 
invalid as to the stronger convalescent. Medi- 
tation and private devotion must be regu- 
lated by the state of the soul. All vain efforts 
to pump water out of exhausted springs are 
only hurtful. What emotion there is must 
be tenderly and carefully nursed ; but to s!t in 
dutiful abstraction for half an hour when the 
soul is too weak to exert itself for more than 
five minutes in the exercise of meditation is a 
serious mistake. 

What is needed at such times is the gather- 
ing of whatever small resources of devotion 
the soul may yet hide within it, and the pour- 
ing forth in one concentrated effort of the few 
drops of religious feeling and true worship 
which we can command. A concentration of 
thought, be it only for five minutes, a real 
prayer — be it no longer than the full and 
realized exclamation " Our Father!" — these 
are worth hours of wandering, unfruitful at- 
tempts at meditation, or many long and 
rounded sentences of an unfelt and unnatu- 
rally forced prayer. Begin, then, when the 
soul is dried away, with a short concentrated 
effort; say, if you can even feel this much, 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. gg 

" Lord Jesus, I thirst "; and the promise will 
gradually be fulfilled, " I will pour water upon 
him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry 
ground. " 

Another help in times of dryness is the 
effort, by God's help, to do right ; to keep 
ourselves true and our lives pure, no matter 
how joyless our religion may be. This will 
not miss its reward, but we will little by 
little find the comfort of " having our hearts 
sprinkled from an evil conscience. " Again, 
that remedy in so many of the difficulties 
and temptations of our Christian life, work 
for others, will help bring down the wished- 
for rain upon our parched hearts. " He that 
watereth shall also be watered himself.'' The 
earnest effort to benefit the souls of our neigh- 
bors will result surely, and by God's promise, 
in good to ourselves. Let us not infect others 
with our dryness, but in sympathetic, self- 
sacrificing help to them we shall find that not 
only their cisterns but our own shall be filled 
with water ! 

Let us not despair, then, when we find 
our springs begin to run dry, but let us still 
less sit with idly-folded hands and allow the 



100 STEPS IN THE 

drought to spread. For, if we neglect the 
hints which our consciences give us of the 
necessity of a diligent watering of our souls, 
we will find that even these faithful servants 
will cease to perform their duty ; a deadly 
numbness will creep upon us ; the parched 
ground will no longer thirst, but will lie in 
lifeless sterility ; and we will not even care to 
renew the freshness of our emotions, or the 
vanished bloom of our former hopes and as- 
pirations. 

God may even at such a crisis as this send 
the dark clouds of sorrow to pour their heavy 
floods upon our souls, and by storm and tem- 
pest to re-awaken us ; but shall we wait for 
such a deliverance ? Shall we not rather with 
joy draw waters out of the wells of salvation ? 
If we labor earnestly and faithfully to keep 
our lives fresh and blooming by patient con- 
tinuance in well-doing; if we nurse and cher- 
ish in our hearts with fervent love the " tender 
plant," the " root out of the dry ground/' 
which is entrusted to the fond keeping of each 
one of us, then shall we receive the promise : 
" Thou shalt be like a watered garden, and 
like a spring of water whose waters fail not/' 




PA THS OF RIGHTE USNESS. 1 1 

H, for the happy days gone by, 

When love ran smooth and free ; 
Days when my spirit so enjoyed 
More than earth's liberty ! 

Oh for the times when on my heart 

Long prayer had never palled, 
Times when the ready thought of God 

Would come when it was called ! 



Then when I knelt to meditate, 

Sweet thoughts came o'er my soul ; 

Countless and bright and beautiful, 
Beyond my own control. 

What can have locked these fountains up ? 

Those visions what hath stayed ? 
What sudden act hath thus transformed 

My sunshine into shade ? 

This freezing heart, O Lord, this well 

Dry as the desert sand ; 
Good thoughts that will not come, bad thoughts 

That come without command, — 

A faith that seems not faith, a hope 

That cares not for its aim ; 
A love that none the hotter grows 

At Thy most blessed Name 



102 STEPS IN THE 

If this dear change be Thine, O Lord ! 

If it be Thy sweet will, 
Spare not, but to the very brim 

The bitter chalice fill. 

But if it hath been sin of mine, 
Then show that sin to me ; 

Not to get back the sweetness lost, 
But to make peace with Thee. . . . 



I know well how my heart hath earned 

A chastisement like this, 
In trifling many a grace away 

In self-complacent bliss 

If I have served Thee, Lord, for hire, 

Hire which Thy beauty showed, 
Can I not serve Thee now for nought, 

And only as my God ? FABER. 



PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



IO3 



XII. 

DOUBT. 




" Lord^ I believe : help Thou mine 
unbelief." — Mark ix. 24. 



HE darkness of doubt may hang 
heavily upon a heart even when it 
can honestly cry, " Lord, I believe ! " 
For there are three very different kinds of 
doubt. There is the coldly criticising doubt 
of the intellect, proud of its superiority over 
the heart ; the doubt which stands independ- 
ent and self-sustaining, and with malicious 
triumph wearies the struggling Christian with 
the mocking cry, " Where is now thy God ? " 
And very unlike this unbelief, in every feat- 
ure, there is the " honest doubt " of the seeker 
after righteousness, which, in its anxious ques- 
tionings and restless searchings, shows the 
true ring of an awakened conscience, better, 



104 



STEPS IN THE 



even in its ignorance and error, than the in- 
dolent ease of a fruitless and lifeless assent to 
what should be soul-stirring truths. But lastly, 
and this is the phase of doubt with which we 
would now busy ourselves, there is the doubt, 
disquieting, unnerving, of the believer, who, 
from some of the many causes always astir in 
this world of temptation, is rudely shaken by 
the shock of storming skepticism, or feels with 
horror the slow but steady undermining of 
faithless suggestions, insinuating themselves 
into his formerly quiet soul. 

There are times when great waves of doubt 
come rolling over the Christian, engulfing 
him in the darkness as of death ; times when 
one's creed shrinks to infinitesimal propor 
tions ; times when the struggle with the 
powers of darkness is so intense that the very 
foundations of one's life and hope seem to 
totter, and in utter exhaustion one almost 
feels the burden of a day : 

"Oh Ton vondrait nier pour cesser de douter." . 

Almost, but not quite, for one who has ever 
felt the joy of believing will not be willing, 
even in the blackest doubt, to give up what 



PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, 



105 



little hold he may have left upon his belief, 
vague and shaken though it be. 

In order to help ourselves if such seasons 
of distress should come upon us, let us con- 
sider some of the causes of, and some of the 
remedies for, Christian doubt. 

First, doubt is, I think, often aroused and 
fostered by the disagreement in opinion of 
the various sects and classes of believers. We 
are startled by the bitterness of controversy, 
we see that one man's trust and hope is 
thought heresy and perdition by his neighbor, 
and we exclaim in sad astonishment, " What 
is truth ? " The evil spirit whispers in our ear, 
" What if they are all wrong together? What 
if they are all building air castles, none of 
whose foundations rest on anything more 
solid than clouds ? Vanity of vanities, all, 
even this is vanity ! " 

If one dwells much upon these differences, 
if one tries to explain to oneself the points of 
opposition, or to follow the hot arguments of 
the theologians, the temptation to doubt and 
despondency will grow stronger with every 
new effort ; do not try it — the danger is great. 
There is a " better way" — better than the " best 



Io6 STEPS IN THE 

gifts'' of controversialists — it is charity. Try 
to find not the differences, bat the points of 
contact, the common hopes and affections, 
the deepest foundations of all believers upon 
a common rock. There are pass-words which 
will let us into every camp. There is at least 
one talisman which will open any Christian 
door to us. Let us forget the differences of 
uniform, and the various methods of discipline 
or drill employed by the lower officers, and 
join in admiration of, and enthusiasm for, our 
common Captain. If we follow this course 
the doubts will be lightened. 

Secondly, doubts are often caused by having 
put ourselves, often very unintentionally, under 
wrong influence. Thoughtless contact with 
the intellectual unbeliever, or with the care- 
less worldling, can not fail to untune us. We 
see the good in them, and do not see that 
with their good we imbibe their evil. Let us 
be careful of this insidious influence, not by 
averting our faces from our fellow-men who 
have not the " like precious faith " that we 
have, but by bringing with us, in any inter- 
course with them, in our hearts, if, (as very 
often would be unwise,) not upon our lips, the 



PA THS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. \oj 

conscious presence of God, thus giving our side 
the majority, and filling us with the " courage 
of faith " which can cry, " If God be for us, 
who can be against us?" 

For, thirdly, any withdrawal from the Source 
of our faith, any unconscious widening of dis- 
tance between the soul and God is one of the 
subtlest and most powerful causes of unbelief. 
The child can not walk alone without falling 
into the many snares and pitfalls which 
abound upon the road. Let us not let go of 
the Hand which alone can sustain us. 

And lastly, much bitter doubting, many 
severe and unnecessary struggles, are the re- 
sult of striving to grasp with the reason what 
can only be held by faith. Faith is the in- 
tellect of the heart, it is an understanding of 
a higher order than the understanding of the 
brain, it is a knowledge which can grasp what 
"passeth understanding." It is no unreality, 
no vague aspiration, but the " substance of 
things not seen." It is, as has been wisely 
said, " not an outgrowth of the mind opposed 
to its rational convictions, its clear and inti- 
mate intuitions. It is reason enlightened by 
its Lord and Giver, it is feeling reconciled 



108 STEPS IN THE 

with its great Object ; it is in an emphatic 
sense the right opinion of that which is." By 
keeping the heart, the spirit within man, alive 
and well-exercised, much needless clouding of 
the heavens above us is obviated. 

Curiosity, trying to fathom with the human 
intellect the " secret things " which " belong 
unto the Lord our God, ,? forgetting to wait 
patiently for the time of complete revelation, 
discontent with knowing " in part/' leads into 
much error. 

Having noticed some of the causes of Chris- 
tian wavering and doubt, let us try to discover 
some of the remedies which may be used if 
the preventives which have been mentioned 
have been neglected and the soul has sunk 
into uncertainty. And first, vigorous occu- 
pation for God, service done to Him through 
our fellows, bringing the soul and body into 
healthy active ministration of good, doing the 
Will as far as we see it (and, be sure, we will 
find enough to do if we earnestly try), — this 
is a grand remedy, and likely to bring the 
freshness of our old faith back to us almost 
unconsciously. Leave your doubts alone, and 
exercise your heart and hands, rather than 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. j g 

your brain for a while. Shut and lock the 
door upon your questionings and misgivings, 
leaving them to the unseen influence of your 
active life of doing good. As Bushnell says, 
" Never be in a hurry to believe, never try to 
conquer doubts against time. If you can not 
open a doubt to-day, keep it till to-morrow ; 
do not be afraid to keep it whole years. " 

Secondly, there should be no arguing about 
our doubts. Let us not be drawn into "vain 
disputations " — doubts often find no more 
excellent hot-house in which to blossom than 
the close and heated air of metaphysical 
debate. To quote again, this time from 
Carlyle, " If, even on common things, we 
require that a man keep his doubts silent, 
and not babble of them till they in some 
measure become affirmations or denials ; how 
much more in regard to the highest things, 
impossible to speak of in words at all ! " 
There are, naturally, questions which an igno- 
rant and doubting soul may rightly long to 
ask, advice which some one higher in the 
Christian life may give for comfort and en- 
couragement ; but there are intricacies of 
subtle thought, curious questionings, debated 



HO STEPS IM THE 

upon for the sake of argument ; there is a 
bringing to the light of vain imaginings, the 
speaking of which can do us no good, and may 
to our eternal shame infect others with the 
same sore malady. Let us avoid these. 

Thirdly, with the growth of our knowledge, 
with the enlargement of our faculties of hu- 
man reasoning and science, we should increase 
in like degree and to an equal extent our 
powers of soul, our reverent worship of the 
Unseen. 

" Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
But more of reverence in us dwell, 
That mind and soul, according well, 
May make one music as before.'' 

Fourthly, we can fall back, no matter how 
low and imperfect our creed may have become, 
upon the eternal rightness of things, the justice 
of God's overruling Providence, whatever may 
be its secret and inscrutable workings. At the 
worst and lowest ebb, let us try to cry with 
blind trustfulness, " Though He slay me, yet 
will I trust in Him ! " 

God's justice is a bed where we 
Our anxious hearts may lay, 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. t \ i 

And, weary with ourselves, may sleep 
Our discontent away. 

" Who is among you that feareth the Lord, 
that obeyeth the voice of His servant, that 
walketh in darkness, and hath no light ? let 
him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay 
upon his God." And this brings us to the 
last and greatest remedy, the one which will 
conquer if all others fail — love, the charity 
which " believeth all things." No questions 
of doubt in non-essentials, no uncertain- 
ties of thought concerning the minor truths 
of religion can harm effectively if love 
remains, if the heart is warm with devo- 
tion to Jesus Christ, the likeness of the 
unseen God. " Rooted and grounded in love," 
our Christianity will stand firm, however much 
the topmost leaves and twigs may sway, 
tossed with tempest or swayed with disturb- 
ing winds of doctrine. 

There may be clouds upon our horizon, 
some mountain-tops may be hidden from our 
eyes in enshrouding mists, but let us not be 
anxious lest the light should fade from our 
day, or strive, with the flickering candle of 
human knowledge, to explore the dark ravines 



112 STEPS IN THE 

of the mountain-side which lie far apart from 
our necessary way, while yet the glorious Sun 
of Righteousness, the Light of the World, is 
shining in all His strength right upon our 
path, and while we can raise our eyes almost 
blinded with excess of light to where He 
shines in the zenith of our heavens ! 

Let us wait patiently for His warming and 
brightening influence, and at last not only our 
immediate path, but all the by-ways in which 
doubt once wandered forlorn, will be illumi- 
nated by His sunshine. But we must be sure 
that our sight of Him is not obscured. We 
must open our hearts to His warmth and 
radiance ; we must cling to the love of Jesus 
Christ as the one thing needful, without 
which, indeed, the world would be utter dark- 
ness. 

Stimulate your love of Him ; watch its 
signs and tokens in your heart, and if you find 
it growing cold, if you find that doubt is 
weakening your hold on Him, take the holy 
Book which tells of Him, and read, without 
stopping to question any of the " hard say- 
ings," or difficult meanings, but as a child 
would read a book in which it thoroughly be- 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. i j 3 

lieves, and let your heart get warmed and 
quickened by the glow of that holy life and 
self-sacrificing death ; fill your soul with the 
thought of how He loved and suffered, and 
you will find that you can not close the Bible 
without, at least, having rekindled a small 
flame of love in your own heart. Try to think 
much of Him, to feel Him as a live and pres- 
ent Master, and be willing to set aside doubt- 
ing with the quiet contentment which can 
say : 

" I can not understand, I love." 

" For now I know in part, but then shall I 
know even as I am known. And now abide 
faith, hope, charity, these three ; but the 
greatest of these is charity.' 



TRUST. 



HE same old baffling questions ! O my friend, 
I can not answer them. In vain I send 
My soul into the dark, where never burn 
The lamps of science, nor the natural light 
Of Reason's suns and stars ! I can not learn 
Their great and solemn meanings, nor discern 
The awful secrets of the eyes which turn 
8 



ii4 



STEPS IN THE 



Evermore on us through the day and night 

With silent challenge and a dumb demand, 

Proffering the riddles of the dread unknown, 

Like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes of stone, 

Questioning the centuries from their veils of sand ! 

I have no answer for myself or thee, 

Save that I learned beside my mother's knee ; 

"All is of God that is, and is to be ; 

And God is good." Let this suffice us still, 

Resting in childlike trust upon His will, 

Who moves to His great end unthwarted by the ill. 

WHITTIER. 




OTHING but the liberty of believing much will 
save us from believing nothing. bushnell. 



PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



US 



-- 



XIII. 

DESPONDENCY. 

"Why art thou cast down, O Try 
soul? "— Ps. xlii. 5. 

HERE is no more prevailing evil in 
the daily lives of nine-tenths of the 
men and women of the present time 
than the vague, undefined, insidious despond- 
ency which is known by the indefinite expres- 
sion of " the blues." We are all attacked by 
this strange, often inexplicable depression, 
which seems to arise without cause, and in a 
moment hangs a heavy cloud before our eyes, 
turning our day to darkness, and plunging 
us into a heavy listlessness of sorrow from 
which it seems impossible to rally. Often 
there is no apparent reason for this over- 
clouding of our souls ; when questioned we 
can give no excuse ; but it is there, lying 



Tl6 STEPS IN THE 

heavy upon us, and the fact that there is no 
reasonable cause makes it all the harder to 
bear. Everything looks black and gloomy ; 
our lives seem intolerable ; even our religion 
gives no hope or light, and we feel as though 
any past "joy in believing " were a dream 
from which we have awakened to meet a 
crushing reality of sadness. Sometimes this 
despondency is simply the result of physical 
causes. 

" Tears, tears ! Why do we weep ? 
"Tis worth inquiry ! that we've shamed a life, 
Or lost a love, or missed a world perhaps ? 
By no means. Simply that, we've walked too far, 
Or talked too much, or felt the wind i' the east ; 
And so we weep, as if both body and soul 
Broke up in water." 

If this is the case, there is, naturally, noth- 
ing to do but wait patiently for our fatigue 
to pass away, and for nature to right itself. 
But there are other springs from which de- 
spondency may flow, of graver import, and to 
be watched with careful eye if we would stop 
the flood of melancholy which, if allowed to 
stream in upon our souls unchecked, will un- 
dermine our strength of spirit, swamp our 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. j i y 

good resolves, and eventually choke and 
drown our very religion. I think we will find 
on close examination that there are causes, 
hidden, and often unguessed, which are sure 
to bring about the sad results of depression 
and gloom, and which, with faithful and 
patient striving, trusting to God's aid in our 
endeavors, we may successfully and, in the 
end, entirely bring under control. 

And first, much trouble is caused, much 
dissatisfaction aroused by an over-estimate of 
oneself. We are often unconscious of how 
high a price we put upon ourselves. We 
foster and indulge ourselves in the idea that we 
are unappreciated, that there is much good in 
us which others take no note of; that we de- 
serve more than we get. Alas, there was great 
need for St. Paul's exhortation to " every man," 
"not to think of himself more highly than 
he ought to think." We measure ourselves 
by the lowest standards around us, and think 
we are better than others. We judge others 
by their actions, ourselves by the occasional 
good impulses and aspirations of our souls, 
never remembering that our neighbors may 
have as many praiseworthy thoughts, as many 



Il8 STEPS IN THE 

noble suggestions as ourselves. We thank 
God in our hearts that we are not "as this 
publican," and it is the lack of those around us 
to discover all the fine qualities and deserving 
traits of our character, which often sinks us 
into the wretched and selfish despondency 
which sighs, " I am not appreciated ; no one 
thinks as much of me as I deserve ; no one 
understands me ! " Surely there ought to be 
an easy remedy for this diseased fancy in one 
look at our blessed Master ! In the bright 
light of His perfect Humanity, dare we think 
more highly of ourselves than we ought to 
think? One glance at that Character should 
cover our self-complacency with shame, and 
change our Pharisaic thanksgiving into the 
cry, " Lord, be merciful unto me, a sin- 
ner !" A remembrance of the patience with 
which the Son of God " endured the con- 
tradiction of sinners against Him/' should 
bring us humbly down upon our knees in 
gratitude for whatever love and friendship we 
may have found upon the earth, feeling that 
we have received richly above what we have 
deserved. In our selfishness we had become 
absorbed with the idea of our own importance / 



PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



II 9 



and losing sight of the great standard by 
which we must all be judged, we had felt, as 
Faber expresses it : 

" All the world engrossed with judging 

My merit or my blame ; 
Its warmest praise seems an ungracious grudging 

Of praise which I might claim." 

Let us try to keep a right estimate of our- 
selves before our eyes, by " looking unto 
Jesus." We will not make so exacting a de- 
mand upon the admiration or appreciation of 
others if we do this. And let us remember, 
further, that there is One who knows every 
good impulse, every struggling aspiration of 
our hearts, and who gives them full value in 
His appreciation of us. There is One who 
understands us as thoroughly and as sym- 
pathetically as we could possibly wish. He 
loves us so dearly that He is quick to seize 
every point of merit, every slightest sign of 
improvement, and He will give us richly of 
His bounty, rewarding us with a liberality 
beyond, far beyond, our poor deserving. 

Depression is, furthermore, encouraged by 
an undue indulgence of the imagination. The 
imagination of man is a dangerous gift; great 



120 STEPS IN THE 

in its capacity for good, but great in a like 
degree in its capacity for evil. If diverted 
from its only true channel and exercise in the 
contemplation of the glory of God, the imagi- 
nation becomes vain, and the foolish heart is 
darkened. We indulge ourselves too often in 
the erection of air-castles, picturing to our- 
selves what our lives might be, and filling our 
minds with dissatisfaction of the realities of 
our existence. A false view of life and its 
object is thus engendered in the mind. We 
see everything through a haze of unhealthy 
sentiment, and steep ourselves in enervating 
romance until nothing prosaic can satisfy us, 
and we " sigh among our narrow days," and 
shrink from the contact with daily duty, envy- 
ing the happier souls for whom destiny seems 
to have reserved the poetry of life. " Every 
ship is a romantic object except that we sail 
in. Embark, and the romance quits our ves- 
sel, and hangs on every other sail in the hori- 
zon. Our life looks trivial, and we shun to 
record it," says Emerson. If we would guard 
against " the blues," let us look life in the face 
cheerfully and honestly, " casting down im- 
aginations," building no unreal and fantastic 



PA THS OF RIGHTE O USNESS. j 2 1 

air-castles, but satisfying our hearts with the 
thoughts of the beauties of heaven, the joys of 
our life in Christ, the majesty of our God ; and 
we will find that these dreams of the soul will 
not leave a bitterness behind them, but will suf- 
fuse every trivial task of daily life with a heav- 
enly glory which will make duty gladsome, and 
.change the hardest prose into sweetest poetry. 
Even without the over-indulgence of the im- 
agination, life will sometimes appear monot- 
onous, and the saddest of depression will sink 
into our hearts from very weariness of endless 
routine, plodding forward day by day without 
apparent progress, like the horse in a tread- 
mill. But even the poor horse in his mo- 
notonous going, seemingly accomplishing 
nothing, is working better than he knows. 
The work is being done, although he can not 
now see his usefulness. Our lives may be 
weary and monotonous, many lives are, but 
remember that a patient continuance in the 
most w^e^risome and unattractive routine will 
bring its reward at last, if carried out in the 
spirit of holy and sanctified endeavor. Do 
not despair because your life seems useless, 
your duties mean and trivial. In the most 



122 STEPS IN THE 

uneventful and prosaic life there are duties to 
perform, temptations to overcome, virtues to be 
trained and cultivated. We are all called to a 
u high calling," and we can all of us claim the 
promises given to " him that overcometh " if 
we stand fast to the end. 

" No life 
Can be pure in its purpose and strong in its strife 
And all life not be purer and stronger thereby. 
The spirits of just men made perfect on high, 
The army of martyrs who stand by the Throne 
And gaze into the Face that makes glorious their own, 
Know this surely, at last. Honest love, honest sorrow, 
Honest work for the day, honest hope for the morrow, 
Are these worth nothing more than the hand they make 

weary ? 
The heart they have saddened, the life they leave 

dreary ? 
Hush ! the sevenfold heavens to the voice of the 

Spirit 
Echo : He that o'ercometh shall all things inherit." 

And, lastly, the great and prevailing cause 
for all depression, the instigator to all vague 
and unaccountable melancholy, lies in the 
want of an aim, the lack of a fixed and ear- 
nest purpose of life. Any aim will rouse the 
energies, enlarge the heart, quicken the blood, 



PA THS OF RIGHTEO USNESS. \ 2 3 

and give fresh vigor to the whole life. Some- 
thing to work for, to strive after, to struggle 
to attain, chases the shadows from the mind 
and cheers the soul. Active occupation, es- 
pecially occupation which one loves, in which 
one's heart is, will almost preclude the pos- 
sibility of " the blues." But this aim must 
be lasting, this occupation must be such as 
can not become monotonous, this purpose 
must be capable of filling our souls. And 
only one aim, one purpose, occupation for 
one end, can be such. Need I say what it is ? 
There is one aim which every one can have, 
no matter what their condition or circum- 
stances — it is the aim of holiness. There is 
one purpose which can inspire every heart, 
and which will increase in attraction and in- 
tensity with every year — it is the purpose to 
become one with our Saviour. There is oc- 
cupation which will never fail, and which is 
so varied, and so rich in blessing, that it can 
never lose its charm, or weary us with its 
monotony ; it is work for God, service done 
to Him. 

Truly, the Christian should never be cause- 
lessly depressed. Trials will come, sorrow 



!24 STEPS IN THE 

will be laid upon us ; there will be times of 
great affliction sent to our souls, for God 
chas'eneth whom He loveth ; and when suf- 
fering is given us to bear, we may weep and 
grieve, even in our resignation to the Divine 
Will, for our Master Himself has said, " Blessed 
are they that mourn." But to be despondent, 
disheartened, blue, must always be a source of 
shame to the soul who should have the wells 
of inner joy always bubbling up in his heart, 
and who has a Master to love and to work 
for, whose words are : " Let not your heart 
be troubled." 



.JILL our instincts waking suddenly 

Within the soul, like infants from their sleep, 
That stretch their arms into the dark and 
weep, 
Thy voice can still. The stricken heart, bereft 
Of all its brood of singing hopes, and left 
'Mid leafless boughs a cold forsaken nest 
With snow-flakes in it, folded in Thy breast, 
Doth lose its deadly chill ; and grief that creeps 
Unto Thy side for shelter, finding there 
The wounds deep cleft, forgets its moan and weeps 
Calm quiet tears ; and on Thy forehead Care 
Hath looked, until its thorns, no longer bare, 




PA THS OF RIGH TEO USNESS. t 2 5 

Put forth pale roses. Pain on Thee doth press 
Its quivering cheek, and all the weariness, 
The want that keep their silence, till from Thee 
They hear the gracious summons, none beside 
Hath spoken to the world-worn, ' Come to Me,' 
Tell forth their heavy secrets ! " 

DORA GREENWELL. 

OW insipid and foolish a thing were life if there 
were nothing laid upon us to do. What is it> 
on the other hand, but the zest and gl ry of life, 
that something good and great, something really worthy 
to be done, is laid upon us. It is not self-indulgence 
allowed, but victory achieved, that can make a fit hap- 
piness for man." — Bushnell. 




126 STEPS IN THE 




XIV. 

CHRISTIAN JOY. 

" Now the God of hope /ill you with 
all joy and peace in believing?" 1 — 
Romans xv. 13. 

OY is one of the clearly expressed 
legacies of our Master to His fol- 
lowers. Jesus Christ desired that 
His joy might remain with us. Does it not 
seem a strange wish ? Had the " Man of 
Sorrows" any joy to leave to His heirs? If 
He had desired that His sorrows might remain 
with us, in order that we might be made u per- 
fect through suffering," we could understand 
it better, for surely His life had been one of 
grief and trouble ; but to leave us the heritage 
of His joy, does it not seem a poor and chi- 
merical legacy? 

The words of our Saviour have always a 
depth of meaning only to be learned by 



PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



I27 



thoughtful study, a fulness of truth which 
grows with our meditation upon them. In 
searching for some of the springs of that joy 
which He desires to share with us, we may 
reach a deeper understanding of its reality of 
blessedness. 

Scattered here and there throughout the 
New Testament are given reasons for joyous- 
ness which at first sight seem only to add to 
our bewilderment. St. Peter says : " Rejoice 
inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's suf- 
ferings/' A strange cause for rejoicing, 
surely ! Were the very sufferings of Christ 
one of the sources of His joy? In order to 
understand this " divine depth of sorrow' 
where it strikes through the external suffering 
to find the sources of purest joy, we must re- 
member in what cause and for what purpose 
our Master became " acquainted with grief." 
It was a voluntary self-sacrifice for those He 
loved. Strange mystery of love for what 
seems so unlovable, though it be, this is one of 
the secret sources of our Saviour's joy. And 
it is one in which He can invite our participa- 
tion. St. Paul has fathomed the meaning of 
this blessedness when he writes : " Who now 



128 STEPS IN THE 

rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up 
that which is behind of the afflictions of 
Christ. " There is a joy, deep and tender, in 
the bearing of suffering for those we love. 
Have we not felt this? Have there not been 
times when we have rejoiced in the fatigue or 
pain which we have borne voluntarily for 
some dearly loved one ? It is a joy so pure, 
so exalted, so ethereal, that one must needs 
feel it to understand it, but having once felt it, 
we begin faintly to discern what the joy, real 
and inspiring, must have been of Him "who 
loved us and gave Himself for us." To see 
the load lifted from some dear one's shoulders 
by our efforts, to procure the pardon of a 
loved offender by sharing his punishment — 
ah, there is a self-forgetful joy in this which 
expands the soul, and makes us step lightly 
under the heaviest weight of suffering. This 
was one of the joys of Jesus. Is it not one 
which we may inherit ? May we not labor 
for others, suffer for them, if need be die for 
them, and in a life of self-sacrificing love find 
a source of joy clear and never-failing? To 
be a partaker of Christ's sufferings, if actuated 
by the same motives, and sustained by His 



PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, 



I29 



sympathy, (for to become a " partaker" with 
Him knits us to Him in a bond of fellowship 
which gives an additional joy to our heaviest 
sorrow,) will be a cause of true rejoicing. 

Another joy which comes to us disguised as 
a sorrow is mentioned by the Apostle when 
he says : " Count it all joy when ye fall into 
divers temptations.'' A joy to be tempted! 
To have the enemy shake the very founda- 
tions of our walls ! To have the serpent creep 
into our gardens ! To feel the necessity of 
constant watching, continual fighting! What 
joy is there in this ? It is the joy of difficulty 
overcome, of training perfected, that wells up 
in the heart after a well-resisted temptation. 
Ask the soldier if there is no joy in having 
withstood successfully the assaults of the foe ; 
ask the physician if there is no joy in fighting 
an insidious disease and at length by patient 
skill driving it from its stronghold ; ask the 
athlete if there is no joy in the careful training, 
which forbids all luxuries of food, all ease of 
body, that so, with hardened muscles and 
toughened flesh, a sound man through and 
through, he may be prepared to overcome his 
opponent, to win the race, to attain the prize! 



130 



STEPS IN THE 



u Count it all joy when ye fall into clivers 
temptations, knowing this, that the trying of 
your faith worketh patience. But let patience 
have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect 
and entire, wanting nothing/' This was one 
of the joys of our Master which He desires to 
leave with us, a precious legacy. He was 
" tempted in all points, like as we are"; He 
" suffered being tempted," but He overcame. 
And this promise rings through the ages : " To 
him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me 
in my throne, even as I also overcame, and 
am set down with my Father in His throne. " 
The joy of overcome temptation is not the least 
joy in the Christian life, and it is one through 
which we can draw in most blessed nearness to 
Him who incites us with the sympathizing 
encouragement, " In the world ye shall have 
tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have over- 
come the world." 

Another source of purest joy may be traced 
winding like a golden thread all through the 
dark tissue of the Saviour's life. It is the joy 
of a necessary work to do, a special, individual 
place in the world to fill, a task to accomplish 
which the Father had given to Him alone. 



PA THS OF RIGHTED USNESS. \ 3 1 

To " do the will of Him that sent me," to 
" work the works of Him that sent me," to 
be able to say, " My Father worketh hitherto, 
and I work"; to close the years of labor and 
trial with the words, " I have finished the work 
which Thou gavest me to do "; — all through 
the life of the Son of God do we find this ray 
of serenest sunshine. And in our lesser de- 
gree, surely to each of us is the possibility of 
this joy given. The confidence that we are 
sent of God, that our place needs us, that we 
have been put there to work for our Father, 
and that to each of us the "well done" may 
be said — what joy can be more satisfying, 
more "full"? Then there is the joy of a 
Christian " altruism "; the rejoicing with them 
that do rejoice. Sympathy with others in 
their joy may often be a fruitful source of 
happiness to those whose own lives at the 
time seem dark and joyless. And while the 
sins and sorrows of the world He had come 
to save must have added many a thorn to the 
Saviour's crown of suffering, surely the laugh- 
ter of little children, the innocent joy of 
happy homes, the rejoicing of those whom 
He had helped and comforted, must have 



132 STEPS IN THE 

given Him some moments of truest, simplest 
joy. There is always some happiness near us 
which we may, by sympathy, appropriate and 
enjoy. 

Then, too, there is a joy in the beauty of 
God's revelation of Himself through Nature* 
which we feel must have brightened many a 
lonely hour of the Son of Man. He who con- 
sidered the lilies, who watched the blue 
waters of Galilee, who climbed the mountain 
heights alone, to commune with His Father 
in the midst of the beauties which He had 
created, must have felt the simple joy of 
Nature, " God's Soliloquy," as Martineau calls 
it, well up fresh and full within His heart. 
Nature in her purity, direct from the hand of 
her Creator, often gives us the keenest realiza- 
tion of what the " peace which passeth under- 
standing," the "joy unspeakable and full of 
glory," mean. " For Nature comes sometimes 
and says, * I am ambassador for God/ " There 
are times when the beauty of sea and sky and 
mountain elevates the soul to an ecstasy of 
worship which to the Christian is pure joy. 
And the Christian has a claim upon nature, a 
power of joyous receptivity which the atheist 



PA TIIS OF RIGHT EO USNESS. \ 3 3 

can not know ; for he can sing with glad con- 
viction/' The heavens declare the glory of God, 
and the firmament showeth His handiwork." 
" The earth is the Lord's and the fulness 
thereof." He can take them to himself as 
his own property, remembering that it has 
been said by the Apostle, " all things are 
yours"; he can read a tender message from 
his Father in every beauty which meets his 
eye, and the glory of the " footstool " of God 
will draw his thoughts to the inconceivable 
things " prepared for them that love Him," 
of which these beauties of earth are but the 
sign and symbol. 

But it would fill a volume to enumerate the 
many joys which, as one meditates upon this 
thought, shine out in ever-increasing numbers, 
like the stars which gather one by one in the 
early evening sky, to grow and spread until 
the eye is bewildered with their countless 
twinklings. There is the joy of Faith, know- 
ing that " all things work together for 
good to them that love God "; there is the 
joy of Hope, "if we hold fast the confidence 
and rejoicing of hope firm unto the end"; 
there is the joy of Charity, which " rejoiceth 



134 



STEPS IN THE 



in the truth," which fills our hearts with love 
to God and man, brightening our lives, and 
vitalizing our actions. 

The Christian's joys are not few or scanty ; 
they may be as free and full as were the joys 
of the Master, who leaves them to us in loving 
legacy. 

But the mistake which often leads us to 
depreciate the value of this most blessed gift 
is that we are apt to compare the "joy and 
peace of believing," with the joy which may 
be found in unbelieving. We forget that 
Jesus tells us, "not as the world giveth, give 
I unto you/' and look for the same noisy, 
exuberant happiness in following Him which 
we see in those who follow only their own 
pleasure. But it is just because the joy of 
the world is never " full," that it is noisy. 
True joy, joy which is full, is always quiet, it 
is " unspeakable." When the tide of joy is 
highest, there comes a stillness upon the 
waters. So it is with the Master's joy ; it is 
not noisy ; it can not be expressed ; it often 
overwhelms the soul with a peace that drowns 
words. It is the joy of the silent, glorious sun- 
rise, flooding the earth with a splendor which 



PA THS OF R1GHTE0 USNESS. \ 3 5 

awes and quiets; it is the joy of the warm, 
mute Spring day, when the flowers steal noise- 
lessly into the sunlight, opening wide their 
petals to its rays, when the air is laden with 
sweet odors, and life is filled with a dumb and 
subtle gladness. It is the peace of the placid 
lake, which lies so still among the hills that it 
reflects the whole sky upon its breast, and 
clothes its waters with a robe of heavenly 

blue. 

And the joy of the Christian is a pure and 
innocent one. It is the joy of the little child, 
(for in our joy, as in much else, except we be- 
come as little children we can not enter into 
the kingdom of heaven,) bubbling up fresh and 
unconstrained, overflowing with harmless, un- 
affected gladsomeness. It is the joy of the 
brook, as it ripples over the stones and obsta- 
cles in its way, singing low to itself the while, 
and catching miniature reflections of the sun 
above it in every bright little curve and angle 
of its waters, busy ever with its onward prog- 
ress, keeping always in quiet faithfulness to 
its one aim, its desire " to join the brimming 
river/' 

Have we not found some meaning in the 



I36 STEPS IN THE 

blessed words, "' That my joy may remain 
with you"? Is there any restless, uncertain, 
fleeting joy of earth to be compared to it ? It 
is the divine Alchemist changing everything it 
touches into gold. Suffering, temptation, all 
" the ills that flesh is heir to," only add fuel 
to its clear flame. The joy which is the result 
of holiness, not of happiness, requires no out- 
ward circumstances in which to thrive and 
grow, no hot-house of happy chance to make 
it blossom. It stands, like the Tree of Life, 
bearing fruits all the year round. 

Therefore, " Rejoice in the Lord alway ; and 
again I say, Rejoice ! " 




UES of the rich unfolding morn, 
That, ere the glorious sun be born, 
By some soft touch invisible 
Around his path are taught to swell ; — 



Thou rustling breeze, so fresh and gay, 
That dancest forth at opening day, 
And brushing by with joyous wing, 
Wakenest each little leaf to sing ; — 

Ye fragrant clouds of dewy steam, 

By which deep grove and tangled stream 



PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

Pay, for soft rain in season given 
Their tribute to the genial heaven ; — 

Why waste your treasures oi delight 
Upon our thankless, joyless sight ; 
Who day by day to sin awake, 
Seldom of heaven and you partake ? 

Oh ! timely happy, timely wise, 
Hearts that with rising morn arise ! 
Eyes that the beam celestial view, 
Which evermore makes all things new ! 

New every morning is the love 
Our wakening and uprising prove ; 
Through sleep and darkness safely brought, 
Restored to life, and power, and thought. 

New mercies, each returning day, 

Hover around us while we pray ; 

New perils past, new sins forgiven, 

New thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven. 

Old friends, old scenes, will lovelier be, 
As more of heaven in each we see ; 
Some softening gleam of love and prayer 
Shall dawn on every cross and care. 

As for some dear familiar strain 
Untired we ask, and ask again, 
Ever, in its melodious store, 
Finding a spell unheard before ; 



137 



I38 PA TH $ OF RIGHT EO USiVESS. 

Such is the bliss of souls serene, 

When they have sworn, and steadfast mean, 

Counting the cost, in all t'espy 

Their God, in all themselves deny. 

O could we learn that sacrifice, 
What lights would all around us rise ! 
How would our hearts with wisdom talk 
Along Life's dullest, dreariest walk ! 

KEBLE. 



